Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Standard haunted house thriller, but since it is a British flick, much of he dialogue is unintelligible. What it boils down to is several attractive youths move in an abandoned House where murder has been committed in the past. Each has his/her own shady story to tell. Some people die, and spirits abound. The sets are impressive, reminding me of Hammer's Dracula castle sets. The always attractive Billie Piper plays a psychic, and is the main reason for watching this turkey. A couple of halfway decent sex scenes keep one's interest from totally flagging. Shot in Romania, apparently on a set left over from another movie. Now that's economizing! That's how THE TERRROR with Jack Nicholsoand and Boris Karloff got made.

I don't know what everyone is screaming about this film being horrible. The acting was pretty good, the story line was GREAT (the twist reminded me of Skeleton Key), and the effects were ample and done well. I would definitely watch this again. This kind of movie is one that you have to watch and pay VERY close attention, because the director and the writers threw facts and background at the viewer bit by bit, slowly, building up to the final climax. The only issue I had was that this is a British film, and I had a bit of a hard time understanding some of the dialog, especially when spoken quickly. Other than that, I liked it. I liked the story and the house, I would LOVE to have this house, just as it is.

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.

By my horrible experiences with movies at the rental places, I feel that I have enough experience to judge a crappy movie and with a the name of this movie and the cover, I figure that such would definitely go in my crappy collection. It was collecting dust until I was haggled to watch it last night and I'm glad I did. This movie has no special effects what so ever that I remember, well, nothing CGI or extreme and it still kicked ass. It has an original story, good acting (for the scope of this film) and it was thoroughly executed with a different approach on the subject of spirituality. I can honestly say that I didn't get bored or annoyed or got up to do something else while it was playing. I liked it.