My quick rating – 5.2/10. If you ever needed proof that childhood trauma and cursed Egyptian relics don’t mix, Traumatika is here to hammer that message home with a blood-smeared shovel. The poster alone looks like something that crawled out of a therapist’s nightmare, and the opening text about the five types of childhood trauma isn’t exactly comforting. From there, we’re off to Egypt in 1910 for a ritual that screams “nothing good will come of this,” and sure enough, it doesn’t.
Fast forward to Pasadena, California, in 2003, because every good curse needs a long flight home, and little Mikey’s night terrors are about to turn into a full-blown demonic family reunion. The movie doesn’t waste time easing you in; it goes straight for the jugular. Between the nightmare-fueled scenes and a missing-kid storyline straight from Unsolved Mysteries: Hell Edition, it’s clear early on that no one’s sleeping soundly tonight.
Then we meet Abigail (Rebekah Kennedy), the woman holding the kid hostage and delivering a surprisingly effective performance. At first, she seems like your standard-issue lunatic, but the film actually gives her some disturbingly believable motivation. Turns out, her family makes the Texas Chainsaw clan look well-adjusted relatives. The father-daughter relationship alone is enough to make you want to call your parents just to thank them for not being monsters. Moms, however, might want to sit this one out, it gets rough.
Credit where it’s due: the gore and makeup effects look fantastic. No glossy CGI sludge here — this is old-school, sticky, tactile horror. The blood splatters, the demonic transformations, and the ghoul design are all convincingly grimy and gross in the best possible way. The first hour is pure Halloween fuel. Dark, gritty, and confidently mean-spirited. It even manages to layer in a surprisingly human message about how trauma festers through generations, giving the carnage some emotional weight.
Then, somewhere around the two-thirds mark, the movie hits a wall. The energy drops, the pacing slows, and suddenly it feels like someone switched reels with a lesser film. The plot meanders toward a finale that’s more “well, I guess that’s one way to end it” than “holy hell, what a finish.” It’s a shame, because the first half was on track to make this an indie horror knockout. Instead, it limps across the finish line and leaves the door open for a sequel, which, knowing horror, will probably happen whether we asked for it or not.
Still, there’s a lot to like here. Emily Goss also turns in a decent performance as Alice, Abigail’s younger sister, and Sean Whalen’s scenes are a fun surprise for horror fans who spot him instantly from The People Under the Stairs. The psychological themes land well, the practical effects deliver, and the first half alone justifies the watch.
Traumatika starts as a creepy and emotionally raw horror story and ends as a decent indie that lost its nerve halfway through. It’s not perfect, but compared to some of the dumpster fires I’ve sat through lately, this one’s a walk in the bloody park.
