Trauma

You ever see a film so terribly bad that once it's over, you immediately forget everything that transpired, almost completely scrubbing it from your memory? Years later, you hear these people online who discover it, claiming it's "as disturbing as a Serbian Film", and you think, "I HAVE to watch that!!", forgetting you had already seen it, hated it, and forgot all about it? Then you press play and you think, "Hmmm, this looks strangely familiar. I've seen this before, but maybe it was just a part used in the trailer...?" Then the actors start delivering their lines with all of the aplomb of a High School play, and you start to think to you yourself, "Wait a minute, did I see this?". Then when it finally hits you that you DID this trash and you sadly pick up the remote, press stop, and hang your head in shame for having wasted 20 minutes of your life doing all of this, 20 minutes you will NEVER, EVER get back?

No? So it's just me then?

Writer and director Lucio A. Rojas was overly ambitious and certainly went all out to create insane shock value, but his inexperience as a filmmaker overshadowed his ambitions. There were just too many rookie mistakes, some so easily avoided, that it's a shame he at least didn't go back and edit some of the obvious issues. There were too many long, dragged out, and some unnecessary filler scenes, but that can be forgiven as rookie mistakes. But the film being too dark in the dark settings - and some so badly out of focus, could've easily been fixed post. I was impressed with the gore effects, prosthetics and S/VFX, but in many of those scenes, the camera only lasted a few seconds - some even less than one second, hardly enough to enable the shock value fully. You'll spend more time trying to figure out what you just saw in between dark, washed out, out of focus and quickly filmed scenes, you'll lose focus on what's happening next, to the point of getting annoyed, and that's still with me also having to constantly rewind to try and figure out what I just missed. The first few minutes of the film were the most impactful, as they were perfectly shot. But the rest of the film is hit and miss, which makes this entry into the gore genre a misfire that could've been much better.

The premise of the movie is strong, and the overall production is good, but while I'm fairly desensitized to graphic violence, the rape scene was sickening, excruciatingly long, and unnecessarily graphic. The direction of the scene doesn't waver in terms of the brutality and that the women are tragic victims; nevertheless, I felt it was over the top to a point that I had to ask why.

The introductory scene of Juan as a young man, which also is the opening scene of the film, also was intensely disturbing. I'm on the fence as to whether it was gratuitous or not. I know the Chilean revolution of the '70s was exceptionally brutal and violent, so perhaps it's necessary thematically. I don't think viewers from the United States are willing to tolerate that level of visceral, grotesque brutality on the screen, however.

The film is overall very dark and difficult to tolerate at times, in my opinion, and I sort of wish I hadn't watched it.

-Stupid script; -stupid dialogue; -gratuitious nudity and full frontals galore; -stupid "based on a true story" BS historical context with the Chilean dictatorship (exploiting history and victims); -shock for the sake of shocking; -confused plot; -plot holes; Etc.

Not much to say about this one, it tries to top aA Serbian Film but fails because ASF, how exploitative it might be, actually has a somewhat coherent plot.

This grabbage doesn't.

A tedious watch, where the overall garbageness overwhelms everything else.

With a clear intention to shock, "Trauma" (2017) perhaps represents one of the most brutal examples of the horror genre. The film's plot is anchored in the deep scars that Pinochet's dictatorship left in Chile and its society, exploring a narrative full of violence and taboo themes.

The film has its highlights, such as the villain Juan, a memorable character devoid of compassion, well-crafted gore scenes, a constant tension and discomfort that permeate most of the work, as well as an underlying social criticism, although, in some moments , this criticism may seem like a mere excuse for the continued presentation of brutality. However, the performances of the main cast leave something to be desired at times, with the character Andrea being the only one to really stand out. Additionally, there are times when digital visual effects look strange and unrealistic.

"Trauma" is not a film aimed at the general public, as its plot is dark, its violence is excessively graphic and it addresses extremely delicate or disturbing themes. In this way, the only audience that will be attracted to this work is those who are entering the universe of extreme cinema or consider themselves a fan of this genre.