Andrea (Gaetano Russo) and Lilly (Domitilla Cavazza) invite a group of friends to spend the weekend at their country villa.
Guest Paul (Timothy Wood) escorts Olga (Anna Maria Chiatante) into the woods to take some photographs. Paul tells Olga to 'drop her dress'; she happily obliges to reveal that she is wearing nothing underneath. Trhauma ticks the nudity box early on.
Paul has an argument with Olga and leaves the woman on her own. She is attacked and killed by a drooling, half-blind loony with a gammy leg (Per Holgher) who makes out with her dead body, taking time out to strangle a dog. Trhauma also quickly establishes itself as sleazy and twisted.
The killer then goes to his home where he meets a mysterious figure who pays him for his nefarious work
in plastic building bricks (not even Lego, but some dodgy knock-off rubbish, like you would get down the market): Trhauma takes the weirdness factor up a few notches.
So far, so entertaining.
Unfortunately, the film then turns into a rather routine slasher that clearly takes its cues from John Carpenter's Halloween, but without that film's high-calibre cast or sense of style. Characters wander round the woods and are routinely dispatched by the psycho until only 'final girl' Lilly is left to discover the mutilated bodies littering her property, which might have been fun if there had been some decent gore—but there isn't.
A final 'twist' is extremely easy to predict and the film closes in an incredibly abrupt fashion, leaving me to wonder whether I had a dodgy copy that was somehow missing the real ending.
