johnnyboyz There is a sad irony behind Billie Piper's character in this rather silly and uninteresting horror film and that is that she is a drama student, ie; she studies acting and must be good at it to pass. Just who is Billie Piper anyway? I'm sure independent filmmaker David Smith couldn't believe his luck when a name and a face as well known as Miss Piper's suddenly found its way to his latest project; his first and so far last directorial effort. But then again, the fact Billie's even in it gives it a now unwanted level of attention and that is due to the acting career Piper has had since.So Piper plays one of five students who have moved into a mysterious house because of its close proximity to a local college. They are Adele (Catherwood); Tom (Malby); Nick (Troughton); Tina (Alsou) and Piper herself playing the role of Jenny. Each character is to such a basic level that to say they adopt the typical teenage embodiment in a low grade, rental horror-come-slasher is a no-brainer. Adele is dressed up in high heels and a black dress: she's dangerous, loose and seductive; Tom is a fast talking and egotistical drug dealer whose previous life events are hinted at in the film but not revisited; Nick is disappointingly given a 'geek' persona tag and acts throughout in a very innocent and at times surprised manner with Jenny the one character who perhaps elevates herself beyond level one to level two. She is established to be independent through asking questions early on and her background (or perhaps her mother's) is relevant later on.But the characterisation in the film is so off colour that another former singer turned actress (Alsou, who plays Tina) is so non-existent in the film that it does not even need her; bar to show up nearer the end and pull some stern looking faces as the tension is supposedly cranked up – I don't think so. And so with this premise of five kids in one location for the odd night, Spirit Trap begins its slow and steady downward journey into familiar territory. By the end of the film we will have predicted a couple of jumps or maybe suffered one at most; we will have seen a couple of dire reaction shots; we will have witnessed the mutilation of a black man and we will have identified formula after a very brief while.Spirit Trap is really a mere horror thriller that takes place within the walls of a single location but the huge, huge flaw here is that the location is instantly open to being left. When we think of some contemporary examples of this formula, we might think of Alien, The Thing or Predator – each example embodying codes of the thriller, horror and possibly science fiction. Spirit Trap does this but in Alien, the characters had to stay and fight what they were fighting; likewise with The Thing and Predator, there was no way out of the snowy base nor was there the Brazilian jungle. In Spirit Trap, nothing is stopping any of its characters from leaving the house.But this sort of logic is dead in Spirit Trap, proof that the horror genre at least in British film will not be challenging the two dominant genres of comedy and gangster anytime soon. Jenny talks to an apparent landlady or accommodation officer before she arrives at the house and yet after a few hours of being at the house with the others, nobody shows up – isn't Jenny or anyone else suspicious? Secondly, Jenny actually goes to the college the next day for classes and stops off at the accommodation office but it appears the college don't even have an officer – this should've been enough to convince her to get up and leave. But hang on, the next instance she wakes up. Was it all a dream? Perhaps there is an accommodation officer after all and she must go and check in the 'real' world. Either way, things are made to look like they're answered but nothing ever actually gets achieved.Then there are the scenes involving eerie phenomenon's. Throughout the film's duration, people will see ghostly reflections in mirrors; wet footprints in their bedrooms leading up to their beds; items will mysteriously change places and bizarre spirit devices will literally write out words and yet nobody does a thing about it. Nobody informs anybody else of these events, nobody brings them up when Jenny begins to have visions later on and the character's reactions are very muted when these odd events occur. The film is very anti-climatic, Nick spends the film looking surprised; Jenny spends the film puzzled whilst threatening to start a relationship with Nick; Tom and Adele's relationship takes a turn for the worse when their drugs sub-plot opens up in a pointless and uninteresting manner and the film becomes at the very end a familiar routine of slasher, chase, slasher. Spirit Trap is a film with gaping logic, seriously one dimensional characters and comes with an electronic soundtrack - and I'm not talking about a Halloween style theme, either.

p-morgan73-1 Everything that's wrong with this pic has been covered already. I was reserving judgement until about eight seconds into the dire opening theme music & credits and it all went progressively downhill from there.I started to notice little things like....their suitcases/packs were carried about in the opening scenes like they were empty or in the packs case stuffed with bubblewrap. I know it's a minor thing but if they can't get that right what chance the rest of the film?. The set, as mentioned, looked as if it had soaked up most of the budget but still looked like it was designed and built by Dan Dan the Am Dram Man. The script was dire, the acting was passable in places but nothing special and the plot flaws and general credibility of some of the scenes lacked commonsense. Now I know students aren't the tidiest of creatures and I was one once but a badly flooded bathroom is a pretty serious issue in terms of damage to electrics and rooms below as well as general mopping up - not in this film. How some people rated this with more than two stars is beyond me. What would they give a really excellent exceptional movie?. As for Billie Piper...if this was a springboard into serious acting then I'd seriously revive the 'pop' career.

Paul Andrews Spirit Trap is set in London where five students who study at the London Arts Institute are contacted by the college's accommodation department who have found them a nice big house to share & the rents really cheap. The address is 23 Fortune Green, Nick (Sam Troughton) is the first to arrive, then Jenny (Billie Piper) pops up & they both venture inside the large foreboding house. Although in a state of disrepair & a bit tatty at least it's cheap & spacious, Jenny then meets Tina (Alsou) before the final two occupants the drug dealing Tom (Luke Mably) his girlfriend Adele (Emma Catherwood) show up. In the main hallway there is a large Russian Spirit Clock which Nick starts, from that moment strange, ghostly unexplained things begin to happen & the lines between reality & fantasy begin to blur...This British production was directed by David Smith & despite all the negative comments I have read on the IMDb I actually rather liked it. The script by associate producer Phil O'Shea with the IMDb crediting Rohan Candappa & Paul Finch with 'additional material' takes itself very seriously & to my eyes seemed like a cross between Clive Barker's Candyman (1992) with it's tragic cross racial love story & The Haunting (1963) as it features an old house with a dark secret, it starts off with a relatively slow pace without ever being totally boring. For me there was enough going on to retain my interest, the character's are strong & were well developed with each one having a dark secret which would become an important plot point at the end so in that respect a lot of the development was actually necessary & makes the twist ending work even more. The twist itself I thought was quite good, I didn't see it coming at all & I really liked the ideas that the filmmakers put across although there's a lot to sit through before you get to them. The basic back-story about a black servant who is brutally killed because of a relationship with a white woman which then sets the chain of ghostly events off is a little to close to Candyman for my liking, in fact it's exactly the same. Also I'm not keen on the haunted house genre in general & some of the supernatural occurrences just aren't that scary or interesting, taps being left on for instance isn't something that is going to give me nightmares.Director Smith does a good job, the film certainly looks slick & the muted colour scheme works well with the period interior of the old semi rundown house where the film takes place. There's a kinky asphyxiation sex scene in this which may interest some & there's a fair amount of drug usage which may concern some. Gore wise there's not much happening here, we get some splashed blood, some very brief shots of nails being hammered into a hand & a clock pendulum impales someone. Spirit Trap isn't a film about gore anyway, it's a film about atmosphere & it trying to scare you. While nothing truly scary happens that will give you nightmares there are one or two creepy little moments in here. The film is actually quite stylish too with some nice cinematography.With a supposed budget of about £3,000,000 Spirit Trap had a good sized budget, that's about $6,000,000. It certainly looks slick enough with nice production design & decent special effects although this isn't an effects ridden film. For some reason despite being set in London it was actually filmed in Bucharest in Romania. The IMDb lists the year as 2005 but the end credits prove it was filmed no later than 2004 so that means Billie Piper made this before she found fame in the new series of Doctor Who (2005 - 2006) as Rose Tyler, she does OK in this to be fair. Sam Troughton who is Patrick Troughton's grandson who was the second actor to play Doctor Who during the 60's appears in this so that's another little Doctor Who connection for you. The rest of the actors do alright & put in decent performances.Spirit Trap seems to be getting a bit of a bashing across the internet & here on the IMDb, to be fair I can see why as it's a bit slow & if you don't follow it properly the ending may not be as effective as it should be & the lack of special effects, deaths & gore probably doesn't help either. Having said that I though it was a good solid character driven haunted house ghost story that had some nice twists & turns but ultimately maybe there's not quite enough going on to save it.

newday98074 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.