Spirit Trap



Spirit Trap is a British horror film that played in theaters. I mention this fact because by no stretch of the imagination did it deserve to play in theaters. Spirit Trap is a completely standard low-budget haunted house movie, with cheap sets, cliché characters, an illogical set-up, and absolutely nothing scary. The only reason anyone (myself included) is looking at Spirit Trap is because the producers got lucky and convinced Billy Piper to be in their movie. Piper is the former pop-tart (for a while she was promoted as the British Britney Spears) who gained acting credibility and star status by appearing as Rose on the new Doctor Who.


"If only I had a real time machine, I could go back in time and stop myself from being in this movie..."

The set-up is as follows: A bunch of college students move into a derelict house, which is haunted. The students include the all the usual stereotypes we expect to see in this kind of movie. Jenny (Billy Piper) is the nice girl, Nick (Sam Troughton, grandson of Patrick) is the nice guy, Tom and Adele are the oversexed couple who deal drugs on the side and therefore represent the people Jason would kill first, and Tina is the creepy chick. Once they've all moved into the house they find the legally required compliment of scary clocks, mysteriously locked rooms, and Ouija boards.


Oh good, it's quarter to... EVIL!!!

Nick, being a character in a horror film, decides it would be a good idea to mess around with the inner workings of the scary clock, even after Jenny identifies it as a "spirit clock" and "a bridge between this world and the next." (Yes, that kind of dialogue would normally come from the creepy chick, but I suspect the producers wanted to give Billie Piper as much dialogue as possible.) Even after he cuts himself on the mechanism inside he keeps fishing around until he finds a book stuck in the gears. He pulls the book out, drops it, and manages to forget it exists. Why? Because if he looked at the book right away the whole story would be given away.

There's a bunch of random things that happen in the house, mostly along the lines of mysterious sounds that cause characters to twist their heads around. Finally one of the characters is driven homicidal (probably by the over-insistant score) and we find out What's Really Going On -- which is that the filmmakers have ripped-off nearly every haunted house movie ever, plus one Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode and a Swamp Thing story.


Next week on Trading Spaces, this room will be spruced up by some people who live in the Bates Motel.

This movie would barely qualify as straight to video if it weren't for Billie Piper, and even as a massive Billie Piper fan I would find it hard to suggest this movie to anyone. It's just so boring and so predictable. I can't believe anyone would still make a movie like this with an eye for theatrical distribution.

Posted: Thu - December 8, 2005 at      

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