Traumatika

A curious palimpsest of a film, scattered across different media and through time, Pierre Tsigaridis’ Traumatika is one of the stranger contributions to 2024’s Frightfest. It’s framed within the context of an exploitative true crime TV show – a convenient justification for all kinds of sins – but an immediate leap back in time to a prequel set in 1910, which sees a man stagger out into the Sinai desert to bury a curious green idol in the sand, assures us that something more unusual is going on. We are, we are told, about to learn about the Pasadena murders, and we find ourselves in 2003, where an eight-year-old boy named Mikey (Ranen Navat) is hiding under a table whilst making a call to the emergency services. “Mommy is a monster,” he says, and based on what we see next, he may well be right.

Using demonological themes as a structure through which to explore aspects of child abuse, Traumatika contains material that some viewers will find very difficult to watch. We see little of the abuse directly, and when we do it’s carefully framed to avoid exploiting victims. This puts the focus on its effects. Tsigaridis is interested in cycles of violence, which can be a tricky subject because there is a risk of stigmatising survivors, but he is able to work around that to an extent by showing us people responding to abuse in very different ways. The film also highlights some of the tricks that abusers use to keep people under their control, beyond direct violence and intimidation.

The idea of demons which specifically prey on children is an old one which crops up all around the world. The name Volpaazu has no ancient origin but will doubtless remind some viewers of Pazuzu, the Mesopotamian wind spirit (mis)represented that way in The Exorcist. That green idol falls into the hands of a fixer who is supposed to be passing it on to its next owner without touching it, especially after he gets a frantic warning for the trader who had it last. That he cannot control his curiosity is an important element in emphasising his own responsibility for what ensues, positioning his entanglement with the demon, at least to an extent, as a matter of choice, whilst there’s also a suggestion that some of his abusive behaviour pre-dated its arrival.

Unfolding in (unlabelled) chapters, Traumatika shifts its focus from one character to another and also presents some of its story in flashback. It’s focused primarily on domestic spaces, which limits what it has to work with, even when including basements, yet it manages to create some more traditionally suspenseful scenes. The reliance on the trope of the (slightly) mysterious costumed figure later on is a bit of a disappointment; it is at its most effective when honing in on the psychological and the social, looking at how easy it is for children – and adults – to find themselves in trouble, and how much rot can be present beneath the surface of ordinary locations. Although it feels like it falls a little short of its potential overall, there’s enough here to make it clear that Two Witches wasn’t a flash in the pan, and it will be interesting to see what Tsigaridis does next.