Trace (2015)

Good concept, poorly executed.

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Blistering performances.

I am someone who tends to watch films over and over again, but generally only films I enjoy watching, I have watched this film many many times. I also don't bother writing reviews very often (usually just leave ratings).I simply do not understand why the rating for this film is so low. The acting is mostly of a good standard, cinematography, special effects and score are also of a good standard.Story line is believable, and has a good atmosphere about it though there are some slight changes I would have made, but i would encourage any horror/scifi fans to give this film a chance as i don't feel that the current rating and reviews do it justice. Xsagaroth

The Three Acts: The initial tableaux: First, the film flashes back to a Soviet research facility in the Kuril Islands, 1992. The well-funded ongoing work concerned paranormal activity and EVP (electronic voice phenomena). During the economic slide of the USSR, the research was officially abandoned, but a few scientists continued research while keeping to the underground parts of the facilities. While supposedly in contact using EVP, one scientist, Victor Konski, is assailed and killed after hearing from 'Abigor.'Second, we flash forward to Los Angeles in the current day. Three couples plus Duffy discuss EVP after consuming a number of drinks at the audio studio run by Duffy and Nick. They go to the basement to listen to this and that, such as the website 'Voices in Static' which mentions Abigor and Professor Konski.Delineation of conflicts: The fools try to recreate the calls to Abigor. Soon enough they get a reply, plus more than they bargained for. Can they close up this process?Resolution: This movie is from the 'How do I close the Hellgate?' subcategory of horror. The resolution is about how well the remaining humans do at constructing a solution once they figure out a solution needs to be constructed.

Trace is a movie with an interesting premise; it follows the trend of chasing paranormal activity through electromagnetic disturbance which is well beyond the human sound range. A few friends decide to get together and test out some equipment while mid-party. Things go awry as the friends slowly die one by one. It is revealed that the EVP (recordig) that was made on the party night, has a list of people and the order in which they will die in. They start to die in that order.The rest of the movie plays out in typical fashion. It is very dull, lackluster and feels like it could have had more done with the plot. More importantly many of the death scenes do not have anything climatic happening; a few of the turn into simple suicides or murder by accident. The entire premise is that a demon has been called from the other side (Asgaroth) and is now picking off people one by one so that he can gain power and cross over into the other side. The movie reveals that it is a prank, but it turns out the demon appears anyway. His debut is computer rendered, but doesn't look too impressive and I had to say it was a bad movie throughout.This movie does not feel much like horror and I do not recommend this movie for anyone but die-hard horror fans.Review originally posted to Orion Age (http://www.orionphysics.com/? p=10454)

First off, this movie isn't scary. It doesn't have any suspense leading up to the kills, a dreadful atmosphere, or a eerily told story. If you're looking for gore, there is none here. Nothing in this movie is gory. If you're looking for suspense, as I said, it's not here. What is here in abundance is bad acting. Throughout the movie I kept saying, "God, that's some terrible acting." If you want to watch a movie filled with actors who aren't any better than you then by all means watch "Trace."Another thing I didn't like was the swaying cam. That's where the camera isn't shaking but not steady. It kept jarring me out of the movie because it was painfully obvious the cameraman was tipsy. I don't like watching scenes with people lying in bed and the camera is swaying constantly. But that's the type of stuff I saw. The camera was still for less than 30% of the time. I couldn't get into the movie at all.Lastly, the kills were too abrupt to be scary. That's what I don't like about modern horror. There's no suspense leading up to the kills where you're tensing up, thinking, "Oh, this douchebag is gonna get it." Instead, they victim just gets stabbed out of nowhere and the impact of his death is too sudden to feel any emotion about it. In this movie, some of the kills are off-screen and the ones that are on screen aren't original, innovative, or surprising. The characterizations are so lame and the kills so boring that I couldn't even muster up the strength to say, "Meh." when someone got killed. All in all, there's no point in watching this movie. No suspense, no gore, no nudity, no interesting characters, nothing.