NateWatchesCoolMovies Dario Argento's Trauma is simultaneously one of the most loopy and coherent efforts from the maestro. Most of his earlier work is pure sensory and atmospheric bliss, detached from things like logic and story. While this one does in fact have a discernible narrative to go along with its giallo splendor, it's still as whacked out as anything else in his ouvre. This was the first of many times he would cast his exotic beauty of a daughter Asia in a lead role, here playing troubled Romanian teenager Aura Petrescu, on the run from dark forces that seem to plague her family. Her lunatic mother (a terrifying Piper Laurie) has her committed and examined by a freaky Doctor (Fredric Forrest in a glorious train wreck of a performance), meanwhile a mysterious serial killer called the headhunter is out there somewhere, decapitating people with a piano wire. It all gets a bit overwhelming for poor Aura, and she runs off, straight into the protective arms of an ex drug addict (Christopher Rydell) who becomes her guardian and eventual lover. Argento is terrific in the role, exuding dark beauty and burnished resilience in the face of many terrors. Brad Dourif has an intense extended cameo as a doctor with icky ties to the origin of the headhunter as well, adding a welcome bonus horror flavor. Also watch for another intense actor, James Russo, playing a police detective determined to nab the killer for good. As far as Dario's stuff goes, this is about as complete and cohesive a narrative as you will find. Granted it's not the garish psychedelia of classics like Suspiria, Phenomena and Inferno, but a little more subdued and clinical, a dark fairy tale that gets genuinely scary in several excellently staged scenes and provides loads of uneasy atmosphere.

Paul Magne Haakonsen This is basically everything that you would come to expect from a late 1980's / early 1990's slasher / horror movie.However, given the predictability of the movie, then "Trauma" wasn't really much of an enjoyable experience, and there weren't any scares to be found anywhere.Director Dario Argento have some pretty nice titles to his name, "Trauma", however, is not really one of them.It was hard to get submerged into the story, because it was slow paced and rather mundane and dull. And the mediocre acting performances throughout the movie weren't really helping the movie along in a nice way either.If you enjoy Dario Argento's work, then there are far better pieces in the collection. It is hard to find anything worthwhile to recommend the movie to be seen, so I will not even try...

Tender-Flesh First and foremost, if you plan to watch this movie because you see Tom Savini's name under special effects, prepare to be underwhelmed to the point of coma-inducement. As we might expect of Fearless Leader, he had great plans for the gore in this movie. He created the electric garrote, and there is no shortage of head removals for him to play with. Unfortunately, Dario Argento must have been high or half-asleep when he decided to hire Savini. Anyone familiar with Argento's previous work(and maybe Argento himself had briefly forgotten what were his trademarks) will know that while the films can have some intense bloody moments, they aren't filled with the supreme gorefests that Savini is know to deliver. Argento wanted a suspenseful film, not a bloodbath, so it is very surprising, probably most of all to Tom, that Savini was hired. There is almost no gore in this picture. You will see a very small amount of blood, the wire slightly beginning to cut into tender flesh, and a few rolling heads with lips moving, but this is kid's stuff. Any amateur FX team could pull that off(and have, sadly). I feel bad for Savini that he was so hamstrung on this project.Piper Laurie also appears in this movie, as Asia Argento's nutty mom. While she almost plays it to the hilt like her role in Carrie, and she is a bit of alright, she is hardly seen at all in the movie, which is a disappointment. Brad Dourif basically has a walk-on role, so his insane antics are also wasted. Asia Argento struggles to carry the lead role and the notion that her dad had her perform a scene topless is not artistic and beautiful(no thank you, Thora Birch) it's just disturbing.Now that I've sliced and diced on the film, let me give it a bit of praise. The pace of the film is pretty good, and there are several POV shots from the killer's perspective which I love, of course. Also, another of Argento's trademarks, the use of color, is subtle and masterful. If you don't know much about him, or film study in general for that matter, you probably won't catch it. But I was looking specifically for his control of color in the film. The killer only murders when there is a rainstorm, and as most people often associate water with blue, that color is quietly present in more scenes that I can count. More often than not, the blue color comes from lighting a scene as opposed to an item specifically colored blue. Also of note, there are a few strange scenes that remind me of some early morning forest. It will probably sound strange, but a few scenes take place indoors where walls are paneled with thick wood and plenty of plain wooden furniture adorns the rooms, while a dreamlike, dusty, foggy hue softens the entire shot and the characters, as if they are wondering in some strange forest. Very unusual. I never noticed it on previous viewings.Argento's last decent work to date. Recommended only for fans.

BA_Harrison Trauma, Dario Argento's first US production, is often cited as one of the director's weakest movies. This may be, in some part, due to the fact that he 'held back' slightly, for fear that his new American audience might not fully appreciate his more outrageous directorial touches. It may also be because Argento unwisely allowed nepotism get the better of him and unwisely cast his inexperienced daughter Asia in the lead role.Whatever the reason, Trauma is certainly a far cry from the director's classics such as Deep Red or Tenebre, lacking the excellent camera-work (to me, the butterfly-cam felt like he was trying a tad TOO hard), precise editing, stunning soundtrack, and stylish death sequences of these earlier works.The one factor that Argento does retain from his Italian films is a ludicrous plot; unfortunately, without the other outlandish elements to distract the viewer's attention from the dumb story, the film flounders in its own idiocy.In Trauma, Christopher Rydell plays David Parsons, a young man who becomes involved in a deadly mystery after preventing Aura (Asia Argento), an anorexic girl who witnessed the murder of her parents (by a maniac with a hand-held decapitation machine), from committing suicide.Dario Argento, who is often referred to as the 'Italian Hitchcock', has fun referencing both Rear Window (by having a young lad spy on the killer from his bedroom window) and also Psycho (with a shower scene that mimics certain shots from the 1960 horror classic), but on this occasion, however, the director is definitely not worthy of the comparison: he delivers a lacklustre and infuriatingly silly effort that took me three viewings to get through.The pacing of the film is dreadful (for example, David's descent into drug addiction towards the end of the film happens in the blink of an eye), the acting is awful (Piper Laurie overacts; Asia Argento doesn't act) and even the gore FX by the usually reliable Tom Savini do not impress.Moreover, the film is not in the least bit scary, and often elicits laughs rather than screams: in a couple of the film's daftest moment, the just-severed head of a murder victim manages to utter a few words to the hero, and, after a decapitation by an elevator, another head is seen screaming as it falls down the shaft!!Perhaps the most disturbing moment of the whole film, in my mind, was the brief topless shot of buxom Asia: maybe it's just me with my uptight British sensibilities, but filming your own daughter with her norks out just doesn't seem right!