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Stars: Susan Gayle-Watts, Ranen Navat, Aj Bowen, Sean O’Bryan, Emily Goss, Rebekah Kennedy | Written and Directed by Pierre Tsigaridis

From the off, Pierre Tsigaridis’ sophomore film, Traumatika, promises its audience an exploration of the various sub-types of childhood trauma, focusing on emotional, physical, and sexual abuse alongside a gratuitous amount of violence.

The story is told non-linearly, starting in present-day L.A. We are introduced to Jennifer Novac’s (Susan Gayle-Watts) highly exploitative – verging on evil – true crime show intent on exploring a spate of child murders that occurred in 2003 in Pasadena, California. But, before we get there, the audience is transported back further in time to the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt, when a lone wanderer buries a mysterious artefact only to then commit suicide after being plagued by visions of his child’s death at the hands of the demon Volpaazu.

93 years later, and we shift to a young Mikey’s (Ranen Navat) bedroom.

Traumatika is the latest film from Pierre Tsigaridis and Maxime Rancon, the creators of 2021’s well received Two Witches. Its premiere at this years FrightFest has garnered a good buzz, especially with what the creators have done before so it is with much anticipation that this film arrives.

The trauma that is indicated in the film’s title is the beating heart of this horrific tale of possession and murder. The drama unfolds over multiple timelines and is a thrilling watch, with a decent amount of unsettling tension throughout the movie’s duration.

The film begins, after a bit of important backstory, with the ordeal of a young boy named Mikey, who is in the thrall of his demonically possessed mother. This leads into a whole host of murder, mayhem and unravelling secrets as the film moves on at a rapid pace. This fast pace amplifies the traumatic horror tremendously,...

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...