Trauma (1993) – Review

It’s something of a common fact about the career of Dario Argento that Italy’s master of horror saw something of a drop off in quality after the release of his inordinately vicious 1987 Giallo, Opera. Back then, cracking America was still seen as something that was an incredibly important thing to accomplish even though it probably meant that the exact style that made a filmmaker so good was probably going to be the first thing that would be neutered once they made the shift. Obviously, Paul Verhoven’s Robocop proved that wasn’t always the case, but after dipping his toes into the Hollywood mindset with the Edgar Allen Poe anthology, Two Evil Eyes, Argento felt it was time to take his particular style overseas to see what would stick.
American Giallos aren’t exactly a new prospect, after all, Brian De Palma made his name off black gloved killers and lurid, psycho-sexual motives, but with Argento’s arrival, surely he’d show these other guys how it’s done, right? Well, not exactly…

After driving by a bridge one day, former drug addict and television newswriter David Parsons spots suicidal, anorexic teen, Aura Petrescu, teetering on the framework, ready to jump. After talking her down and taking her for a meal, Aura is soon picked up by authorities thanks to the fact that she had recently escaped from a psychiatric hospital and taken back to her Romanian immigrant parents, Adriana and Stefan.
However, that night, while her mother, a fraudulent psychic, holds a fraudulent séance in order to try and reveal the identity of a local, head claiming serial killer known as the “Head Hunter”, the killer apparently attacks the group, decapitating both of Aura’s parents and seemingly making off with their liberated noggins while their horrified daughter watches.
Tracking down David, Aura stays with him in order to gain some much needed shelter, but as they figure out how to help her with her eating disorder, the Head Hunter strikes again and again, killing only when there is a violent rain storm occuring and cleaving the victims head clean from their bodies with the help of an electronic noose that tightens with the flick of a switch.
As the amount of headless corpses found in Massachusetts steadily rises, Aura and David attempts to try and find the connection between all the other victims and Aura’s parents, but as they slowly get ever closer to the unimaginable truth, things start to get progressively weirder. What exactly did Aura see that terrible night when the Head Hunter held up the heads of her family? Why does the incredibly suspicious psychologist, Dr. Judd have such an obsession with his anorexic patient? And did Ridley Scott steal the idea of a “Decap-o-matic” from Argento to put it in his film, The Counsellor in order to off Brad Pitt? The mind boggles.

The first issue that Trauma had to overcome is that, in many ways, it’s a far less accomplished reworking of the director’s own classic, Deep Red that copies a great many of it’s more famous moments. The central red herring that the hero has miss-witnessed a vital piece of information is present and correct, as is the killer demanding a very particular set of criteria before they set out on their typically complex and needlessly complicated method of murder. However, while Trauma seems to be something of a greatest hits package for someone who has never seen a Dario Argento movie before, it also comes complete with leaden pacing, uneven performances and a sense of frenzied melodrama that’s so exaggerated, it ends up as the equivalent of eurohorror nails down and American blackboard. The worrying thing is that Trauma doesn’t seem to be entirely a case of Argento’s style meshing badly with the American aesthetic (although they do mix like oil and water) and more to do with the director seeming to lose his legendary touch.
All of his usual tropes, along than the ones I’ve already mentioned, are all present and correct, but they just don’t soar like they did back in their glory days. His camerawork, once so free and flamboyant in the likes of Tenebre, Oprea and Suspiria, now seems ugly, intrusive and worst yet unnecessary and his colour pallet, once capable of searing even the most resistant retina, is grey, dreary and utterly listless. Even his kill sequences – while still carrying that anything-goes edge – suffer from being frustratingly samey as even the great Argento struggles to make repeated decapitations (even with an electronic noose) that interesting despite Tom Savini being on effects duty.

Not to continue to unload on Argento’s American adventure, but the leads are also painfully dull despite the fact the script clumsily ladles on some heavy handed issues such as David’s previous drug addiction and Aura’s anorexia which add nothing much to the plot and give both Christopher Rydell and Asia Argento a bit too much to struggle with. However, the cast does contain a couple of blinders in it’s midst in the form of veteran maniac players, Piper Laurie and Brad Dourif even if the appearance of one of them pretty much guarantees that they’re going to be the killer.
In fact, if just one of those two actors show up, chances are that the film contains some impressive crazy shit and thankfully Trauma isn’t too bland to mute Argento’s crazier leanings. To plough into some much needed spoiler territory (if I don’t, I’ll run out of good things to write), the typically deranged trigger for the killer is an absolutely banger that sees Brad Dourif’s easily shaken surgeon accidently decapitating a newborn baby at birth due to a particularly violent thunderclap. However, instead of coming clean, the panicked staff try to save the careers they’re  admittedly shitty at (anyone else here accidently cut the head off a baby at work? Didn’t think so), they double down by trying to erase the woman’s memory by subjecting her to a rigorous course of electro shock therapy in order to erase that accidental bout of infanticide. As a result, the killer (oh fuck it, you must have guessed that it’s Piper Laurie by now) eventually gets her memory back and goes on that murder spree that’s impressively extra, even for a Dario Argento villain – and of those fuckers once killed someone with the help of a nightmarish wind-up doll. Still, even though some of those decapitations try to add some extra frisson to avoid too much deja vu, audiences unfamiliar with Argento’s style will no doubt roll their eyes at the sight of a severed head somehow whispering a clue despite being a good three feet away from its lungs.

And yet, for all of its obvious insanity, it just doesn’t feel much like Argento’s heart is in it like it once was and the weirdness he used to wield like an expert now seems random and scattered – what other reason is there for Dario to end a violent, American Giallo that also gifts his daughter a starring role with the sight of a Reggae band playing happily on a porch just down the street from a bloody murder…
Traumatic, but for all the wrong reasons.

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