Film

Trauma (2004)

Director: Marc Evans

Movie review

From Time Out London

Evans' antsy follow-up to 'My Little Eye' sees Firth letting himself go as Ben, a car-accident casualty who wakes up from a coma to find himself caught between the deaths of two women: his wife Elisa (Harris), killed in the same crash, and pop singer Lauren Paris, murdered beside Hackney Canal. Looking to piece his life back together, he repairs to a cavernous apartment in a semi-converted East End hospital, sets up an ant colony in his living room, and befriends a new-agey American neighbour (Suvari) who professes a fear of spiders. Brooding several shades grizzlier than his well-worn norm, Firth's essay in self-estrangement is the most compelling thing in this overwritten psychodrama. Evans employs skewed, fractured visuals, jumpy edits and non-diegetic sound effects to get inside Ben's head and under our skin, but it's too much, overcooked, and the story doesn't hold.

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