“Traumatika” is a Messy, Yet Bone-Chilling Exploration of Emotional Pain
Over the years, horror fans have seen their fair share of trauma metaphors. From its earliest days, the genre has existed as a way to confront our darkest fears, but Jennifer Kent’s 2014 film The Babadook arguably kicked off a modern phase of stories exploring the darkness of the human mind. In the decade since, we’ve seen all manner of mental illness and abuse manifested in things that go bump in the night, providing cathartic relief and a visual vocabulary for emotional pain. Director Pierre Tsigaridis dives headfirst into this trend with Traumatika, a cinematic exploration of generational abuse and the cyclical nature of trauma itself. Extremely grim and upsetting, Traumatika follows a demonic figure who targets children and spreads unthinkable pain to anyone who crosses its path.
After a brief yet distressing introduction in which a man sacrifices his own life to save a child, we’re pulled into a series of hellish homes. Mikey (Ranen Navat) has been living for several months in a rundown house haunted by a monstrous mother figure. With inky black eyes and a slowly decomposing face, Abigail (Rebekah Kennedy) forces him to sit in darkness watching an endless series of old cartoons. Brief glimpses of news footage reveal that he’s been missing for months, kidnapped by this depraved young woman. Next we travel back in time as her father John (Sean O’Bryan) ignores warnings about an ancient artifact. Twisting off the head of this mysterious figurine, he unwittingly unleashes a malevolent entity. John is immediately possessed by this beast and begins tormenting his frightened daughters. Tsigaridis follows the consequences of his dreadful mistake and a shocking series of cascading victims.
Essentially told in three distinct chapters, we watch as trauma consumes each character. The opening vignette is a stark depiction of ongoing abuse while the second sees darkness envelop a more or less happy home. Both segments are extremely disturbing, exploring the gruesome deaths of innocent children as well as child sexual assault and crude abortion. Tsigaridis takes no prisoners in relentless and gory sequences of horrific trauma and abject misery. An abrupt tonal shift in the third act presents a modicum of hope, but this element of the story seems wildly disconnected to what’s come before. The lighter tone also negates some of the empathy built in earlier scenes in favor of quippy empowerment and stereotypical triumph. The story hangs together awkwardly and we’re left with a confusing message about recovery.
Though blunt, Traumatika is a powerful metaphor for spiraling trauma which seems to consume everyone in its path. The film is situated firmly in abject darkness, featuring nightmarish cruelty at every turn. But we never dig beneath the surface of these depraved acts to explore the motivations of complex and flawed characters. A jumbled plot and confusing timeline make it difficult to discern any deeper meaning and we don’t learn enough about these unfortunate characters to see them as anything more than tragic symbols and cautionary tales.
Despite a messy conclusion and thinly drawn characters, Traumatika is nothing short of nightmare fuel. A lurking demon overshadows every scene, watching from the shadows as his evil spreads. His victims prove to be equally frightening as they ruin the lives of those they love. Their inky black eyes are devoid of humanity as they gleefully engage in extreme acts of abuse. O’Bryan is particularly unnerving as a demon wearing a father’s skin. Just moments after becoming possessed, he gapes at himself in a bathroom mirror, making a series of unsettling faces as the demon fills out his familiar form. Unfortunately we see little of these characters before their possession, making it difficult to form an effective contrast to who they truly are.
We get similarly vague answers about the nature of this possession. The film’s disconnected introductory scene provides a scant origin story for the sinister artifact, but we learn very little about the demon himself. Tsigaridis is more concerned with the outward effects of victimization than exploring the root cause of ongoing abuse. This results in a watered down metaphor for monstrous trauma that seems to undercut the film’s central purpose. Because most trauma does not stem from an otherworldly demon, but the darkness that lurks in the human heart. Traumatika provides a top down view of extreme abuse while suggesting that, once touched, there’s essentially no way to escape the beast.
Jenn Adams is a writer, podcaster, and film critic from Nashville, TN. Find her @jennferatu.