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Head Trauma from the man who brought us The Last Broadcast is another
one of those Indy horror/thriller films that loves to mess with its
audience. I do not like being messed with by directors. I take that
back. I don't mind being messed with if it is someone like Quentin
Tarantino or someone where I know I am in good hands. The minute the
audience is confused, out of place, or out of focus, they cut that cord
and you have lost them. Head Trauma lost me within the first 10-15
minutes and didn't find me for the entire duration of this film.
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We open up our story with
homeless drifter George Walker (Vince Mola) who is returning
to his late grandmother's house, once he learns that it has
been condemned and will be promptly destroyed. The film
starts off on a bad note as this George character is just
not that interesting or that good of an actor. This was his
first and as of this writing only film, and he is not a
character we really want to spend any time with or care
about his plight. |
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I'm not asking for the character to be
likable, but at least make him interesting. I really could care less
about him and then we are suppose to spend the film with him? Not good.
George finds in his house a man named Julian (Jamil A.C. Mangan), and
they get into a tussle resulting in a bad fall for George in which he
suffers a head injury. Julian is then forced to help with cleaning the
house by his grandmother, Ms. Thompson, (Meryl Lynn Brown), the former
next-door neighbor to George's grandmother. Julian is another first time
actor and I hope last time actor as these two just do not mesh or work
well with each other. They are painful to watch and do not work
together. We have two bad characters and it gets worse.
George then has horrible dreams of a sinister hooded figure, the hanging
body of a dead girl and a fiery car crash. We get these obligatory
scenes of him waking up and realizing it was only a dream. We also get a
lot of stylish camera tricks thrown in with eerie music as well. The
questions come in as well: Is the house haunted? Did something bad occur
here? Is George nuts? Who is this hooded guy? What the hell is going on?
We also get a lot of BOO and gotcha moments. Nothing really out of the
ordinary or anything we have not seen before.
I've said many times that when people go to see an Indy horror/thriller
film they are going to see something different. If we wanted to see a
retread or something like everything else, we could go to the local
theater and view The Grudge 2. We spend time and money seeing Indy films
to see something unlike the garbage thrown at us from studio released
horror films. So why would you take this beat up, tired, and overdone
type of film and do it again? There is no reason to. You have freedom,
and should use it to be original, cutting edge, and different. Why do
what everyone else is doing?
Head Trauma is basically doing what every big studio is doing just on
the Indy level. It has no desire to break any ground, do anything old
well, or try anything different. It is poorly acted, boring, and
unoriginal.
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