Spirit Trap (2005)

I found this terminally boring . In its favour SPIRIT TRAP has a distinct lack of gore . The down side is that it is trying to concentrate on mood and atmosphere in order to hold the audience attention here it totally fails . Director David Smith thinks mood and atmosphere is entirely confined to shooting everything in very poor light and throwing the occasional loud noise in . Big mistake and no offence to Mr Smith but it's hardly surprising that his career didn't take off after this . A few hours earlier I had seen a short film from 2011 called FOXESby the Irish director Lorcan Finnegan which had me disturbed and compelled in equal measure and strictly speaking that wasn't in fact a horror film per se but the oppressive atmosphere via music and cinematography was crushing and wish I'd seen that sort of dread realised on screen here . With hindsight another problem is casting Billie Piper in the main role . I can understand the thinking of " Oh let's get an up and coming name who will be very cheap and who might have a big future in front of her " but the problem is she'll always be remembered as Rose Tyler from DOCTOR WHO . The problem is compounded by Piper's character having a shock plot turn involving a revelation about her mother and all sorts of images involving Rose and Jackie Tyler flashed through my head which constantly took me out of the film . A film I hasten to add that contains no sympathetic characters and is fairly uninvolving to start with

Standard haunted house thriller, but since it is a British flick, much of he dialogue is unintelligible. What it boils down to is several attractive youths move in an abandoned House where murder has been committed in the past. Each has his/her own shady story to tell. Some people die, and spirits abound. The sets are impressive, reminding me of Hammer's Dracula castle sets. The always attractive Billie Piper plays a psychic, and is the main reason for watching this turkey. A couple of halfway decent sex scenes keep one's interest from totally flagging. Shot in Romania, apparently on a set left over from another movie. Now that's economizing! That's how THE TERRROR with Jack Nicholsoand and Boris Karloff got made.

I did watch all the way through. A loose remake of the original "House on Haunted Hill" with scenes added that were stolen from other films, "Reservoir Dogs", "The Omen", "The Exorcist", "Basic Instinct", "An American Werewolf in London" and every movie where teenagers play with a ouija board. However don't get the idea this mess approaches any of those, even Basic Instinct. Very very poor direction. Scenes were shot with no idea how to raise tension and action sequences (for example people hopping up into an attic from a low stepladder like they were bouncing off a trampoline) were in general deplorable. Two of the actresses, Piper and Alsou, simply can't act. Alsou is particularly amateurish and destroys every scene where she opens her mouth. The idea of the movie is actually interesting, but a poor script, direction and acting result in a nearly complete dud.

In London, four students have a call from the student accommodation office of the local university offering lodging in an old house. The psychic Jenny (Billie Piper), the graph design student Nick (Sam Troughton), and the couple of lovers and drug dealers Tom (Luke Mably) and Adele (Emma Catherwood) are welcomed by the weird Tina (Alsou). Nick fixes a spirit clock, and sooner Jenny sees the crimes that happened in the house in the past, when two lovers died. Along the two next days, Jenny, Nick, Tom and Adele disclose that each one of them had killed a person on the past and also that they are trapped in the house, since a ghost is claiming a killer for a killer to release the soul of Edmund Joseph.The storyline of "Spirit Trap" is very interesting and quite original, but the screenplay is not so good since presents this idea in a confused way. I liked the concept that a soul could be exchanged by another in hell provided the basic rule of "a killer for a killer" is accomplished. I liked also the performance of the unknown cast. In my opinion, there are some unfair and some exaggerated reviews in IMDb, since this movie is neither a crap nor a masterpiece, only another reasonable and entertaining haunted house horror film .My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "A Armadilha dos Espíritos" ("The Trap of the Spirits")