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July 16 at 9:35
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From the Catalogue
The upstate New York town of Talbot Falls has been trying to put the horrific events of two years ago behind it, but that trauma gets stirred up again by the arrival of an outsider. Cassandra Lily-Jackson (THE PITT breakout Laëtitia Hollard) has moved in to work on a book about George Washington Carver, but soon a more immediate subject piques her curiosity. Strange sounds and a scarred man issue forth from the house next door by night, inspiring her to write an article for the local paper speculating about “local monsters.” Turns out, she’s right: Adam (Alex Breaux), a patchwork man created by science, and Charley (Alex Hurt), afflicted with lycanthropy, dwell in that house. And when the article goes viral, it attracts the vampiric Sam (Larry Fessenden), assorted other people from the creatures’ pasts, and the enmity of the residents, who don’t appreciate Talbot Falls’ dark past being dredged up again.

TRAUMA OR, MONSTERS ALL is writer/director/star Fessenden’s long-awaited “monsterverse” movie, bringing together the characters from his previous HABIT (Fantasia 1998), DEPRAVED (Fantasia 2019), and BLACKOUT (Fantasia 2023). As opposed to past Gothic rogues-gallery chillers like HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, this is, as usual for Fessenden, a film very much of the here and now. The filmmaker uses the collision of his tormented creatures as a vehicle to comment on human dysfunction and the breakdown of modern society, in which one person’s expressed opinion can unintentionally trigger a wave of bad feelings and bad deeds. At the same time, TRAUMA is a treat for Fessenden’s longtime fans, who will get to see not only his takes on modern horror archetypes come together, but a whole troupe of past collaborators including Joshua Leonard, James Le Gros, Barbara Crampton, Addison Timlin, John Speredakos and many others.
– Michael Gingold