From Chile comes a powerful and diabolical film entitled. Trauma, a horror film in which the most heinous forms of violence and cruelty converge. Horrors, these, drawn from a real-life basis in which light is shed on the nefariousness that human beings are capable of. Written and directed by the talented Lucio A. Rojas (Perfidia and Sendero), Trauma wins a place of honor among the crowded ranks of horror cinema, in general, but also of the extreme horror and rape&revenge subgenre.
The film had its Italian premiere at the The Optical Theatre Film Festival 2017 in Naples as the winner of the "Best Feature Film, “Best Supporting Actor" (Felipe RÃos) and "Best Extreme", the latter conferred on him by Stephen Biro, leader of the well-known extreme film distribution company Unearthed Films.
Asphyxiating, unhealthy and murky, Trauma immortalizes villains who are inspired by real-life characters who were part of Chile's bloody history. One example is Augusto Pinochet, a Chilean general and politician who ruled the country (from 1973 to 1990) as dictator and was held responsible for crimes against humanity. His criminal actions also involved sexual abuse and horrific harassment of women.
Plot: Andrea (Catalina Martin), together with her sister Camila (Macarena Carrere), her friend Julia (Ximena del Solar) and her cousin Magdalena (Dominga Bofill), sets out to reach the home of a distant Chilean uncle. Upon reaching their destination, the four girls are brutally attacked by Juan (Daniel Antivilo) and his son Mario (Felipe RÃos). Finding no help from the locals, the unfortunate group decides to turn to the local police. They later discover that their attackers are somehow connected to the darkest period in Chile's history.
Trauma opens the curtain to unspeakable horrors from the very first sequence, transcending all limits or boundaries. In Rojas' film, any human and family bond is broken, crumbling to ashes. In its place rise walls of suffering and weeping that painfully embrace unimaginable depravities, deviant loves and deleterious lifestyles.
The violence exercised in Trauma knows no distinction between man or woman, adult or child/infant, father and son, brother and sister. Evil, here, intrudes into a carefree party among friends, into every human bond, extinguishing every smile, every feeling and every hope.
In this sphere of anger, submission, and humiliation, flashbacks of a rotten and drastic past unfold, revealing Juan's dramatic and unsettling adolescence. At the same time, his memories accompany the unfolding of a well-developed story that, minute by minute, reaches increasingly painful and unbearable peaks. All made very disturbing by the presence of a slew of abominable actions, psychological violence but also of bodies kicked, stoned or stabbed, decapitations, fetuses dissolved in acid, abortions, severed heads, bites and much more (in this regard, Isabella Marchesse's special effects are very effective).
The result is a shocking and traumatic film that tears at the soul.
The performances (not easy) of the four actresses (Catalina Martin, Macarena Carrere, and Ximena del Solar) are very good while the performances of the two villains played magnificently by Daniel Antivilo and Felipe RÃos are chilling.
In the cast of Trauma: Catalina Martin, Daniel Antivilo, Macarena Carrere, Ximena del Solar, Dominga Bofill, Felipe RÃos, Alejandro Trejo, Max Torres, Claudio Riveros and Eduardo Paxeco.