TRAUMA

Occasionally a film surfaces which delves into the evil that men do and in the process shocks audiences, leaving them shattered long after they have left the cinema.

Trauma is such a film and the synopsis is simple, yet haunting. While travelling through the countryside of Chile on an anticipated fun-filled getaway, four young women are targeted by two strangers who violate them in the most twisted and perverted way imaginable.

Through flashbacks audiences learn that these strangers originated from Chile’s dictatorial past and that the film clearly makes a statement about the violence of Pinochet’s reign.

Confronting viewing even for the most avid horror film enthusiast, the film leaves nothing to the imagination in its depiction of the violence that was experienced during these very dark times in Chile.

Savage rape scenes and extreme butchery which includes cannibalism of live victims, decapitation, dismemberment of limbs, death via merciless knifings, shootings and scenes of even more graphic tortures will be profoundly testing for unsuspecting audiences.

This film is disturbing beyond belief, but the most horrifying aspect is that it’s based on true events. Many viewers won’t last the opening 10 minutes, which depicts the most unspeakable and immoral sexual act ever performed on a feature film. Viewers are then given a 30-minute reprieve to the horrors just experienced on the screen, as the four women are introduced with substantial scenes of gratuitous lesbian activity.

Trauma is a film which will never have a mainstream cinematic release – it’s cutting edge cinema for all the wrong reasons. Traumatic viewing and not for the faint hearted, it’s screening at the Sydney Underground Film Festival. Readers have been warned – watch one of the other trashy cinematic offerings which this film festival is known for. Leave this one alone.

To rate a movie such as this, to complement it or recommend it in any way regardless how brilliant it may be, would be an insult to those victims depicted…those whose lives were horrifically taken… (MMo)

UNRATEABLE

Screening at the Sydney Underground Film Festival.

Sept 13 -16. The Factory Theatre, 105 Victoria Rd Marrickville. $16-$165+b.f. Tickets & Info: www.suff.com.au