|
 top
me if you've heard this before: five college
students move into an old derelict house and
encounters strange going-ons that eventually makes
them turn on one another. And oh yeah, a quija
board (or a variation of one) comes into play.
Plus, the Fair Hair lead is blonde, empathetic,
and is haunted by her past. Thankfully, she's also
psychic, which comes in handy when it's time to
explain the reasons behind all the weirdness, as
she has the ability to "see" what
happened and get the answers. If all this sounds
familiar, that's because it's almost the exact
same premise and narrative construction as "Boo!",
which was itself just like a thousand other
movies. Originality, thy name isn't "Spirit
Trap".
The star here is Billie
Piper, who is currently getting some good face
time on the BBC's new "Doctor Who"
series. Piper plays Jenny, the Fair Hair Lead
mentioned above. The haunted past in Jenny's life
is the death of her mother, who Jenny later
confesses to nice guy housemate Nick (Sam
Troughton) that she "killed". The rest
of Jenny's housemates include the handsome but
very much an asshole Tom (Luke Mably), his slutty
girlfriend Adele (Emma Catherwood), and Tina, the
shy and introverted girl who spends most of her
time in either her room or the bathroom. As
expected, they all have haunted pasts that come
back to bite them at a later date thanks to the
house. Or more precisely, the angry, ghostly
spirits within.
It goes without saying that
those demanding even a tiny inkling of originality
needn't bother with "Spirit Trap", a
movie so clichéd in just about everything it does
that genre fans will be rolling their eyes each
time director David Smith and writer Phil O'Shea
dishes out the tropes of the genre. In this case,
they'll be rolling their eyes a lot.
The first 30 minutes consist of one long dull
build-up, as if Smith and O'Shea thought we, the
genre audience, needs to be introduced to stock
characters like Jenny and company. We don't. We've
seen them thousands of times before, and in
similar circumstances. And we can also figure out
who is going to die, too, and in what order. The
film is just so unoriginal that it's almost
condescending.
Strangely, for a film so
devoted to being formulaic and predictable,
"Spirit Trap" doesn't always deliver on
the goods that genre fans expect, even from the
worst offerings of the niche. The film's lone
highlight involves the slutty Adele, whose idea of
foreplay is to play a slapping game with boyfriend
Tom before the two indulges in asphyxiation during
clothed sex. As expected, Jenny and Nick are
terrible bores, and actors Billie Piper and Sam
Troughton play their archetypical characters
straight. The rest of the cast are decent, but
alas, this really is a case of actors not having
anything at all to work with.
Without belaboring the point,
if you're an old hand with the horror genre,
there's just no reason whatsoever to waste your
time with "Spirit Trap". It just isn't
much of a movie, even for seekers of cheap
thrills, because the film has so few of those as
well. Director David Smith certainly doesn't help
matters, because the film looks pedestrian and
by-the-numbers. At 90 minutes, the first 30 seems
like an eternity, as the filmmakers painstakingly
build up their generic characters for God knows
why. The rest of the film isn't any better, with a
lot of boo scares that wouldn't scare a baby tot.
The usual ghostly apparitions are here, including
the "ghost is standing behind you in the
bathroom mirror!" moments that will have
genre fans snickering with disgust.
The British horror film
industry has gotten quite a boost lately, thanks
mostly to films by Danny Boyle ("28
Days Later") and Neil Marshall ("Dog
Soldiers" and the recent "The
Descent"), but "Spirit Trap"
seems like a step backwards. The overall lack of
originality in "Spirit Trap" is
disconcerting, especially since it seems to have a
decent budget, and as mentioned, the cast is quite
good. It's too bad they've signed up for such a
generic schlock of a movie that offers few
redeeming qualities. Mainstream viewers may find
the film mildly entertaining, but those in the
know will not, and should not, give it a second
thought.
|
