Watch Spirit Trap

Spirit Trap is a horror movie from 2005 starring Billie Piper, Luke Mably, Emma Catherwood, and Sam Troughton. It was directed by David Smith and written by Phil O'Shea. The movie follows five college students - Jenny (Piper), Tom (Mably), Adele (Catherwood), Nick (Chriselle Almeida), and Nick's girlfriend Leah (Georgina Rylance) - who rent a remote country house for a weekend getaway. The house was built on the site of a former mental institution where a doctor named Charles Retreat (Troughton) used to perform cruel experiments on his patients, and it is rumored to be haunted.

Strange things start happening almost as soon as the students arrive at the house. Adele believes that she hears voices, Nick sees what he thinks is a ghost, and Leah has nightmares about the former patients of the mental institution. Tom and Jenny suspect that their friends are simply imagining things, but they soon start experiencing their own strange occurrences. Jenny sees a woman in white in the woods, and Tom finds hidden rooms in the house that he believes were part of Retreat's experiments.

As the weekend goes on, the students begin to uncover more and more about the history of the house and the mental institution. They learn that Retreat believed he could transfer the souls of his patients into dolls, and that he performed the procedure on his wife and daughter after they died. They also discover that the house was built on a ley line, and that Retreat believed he could use the energy from the ley line to open a portal to the afterlife.

As the students delve deeper into the house's secrets, they find themselves increasingly in danger. Jenny is haunted by the woman in white and begins to believe that she is possessed by one of Retreat's former patients. Tom becomes obsessed with the hidden rooms and starts to behave erratically. Adele's health deteriorates rapidly. And Nick and Leah become trapped in a dollhouse that Retreat used to store his possessed dolls.

Spirit Trap is a tense and atmospheric horror movie that uses psychological horror and suspense to create a sense of unease. The movie relies more on mood and setting than jump scares and gore, and the result is a movie that is genuinely scary without being overly reliant on cheap thrills.

The cast is excellent, with Piper and Mably in particular delivering standout performances. Piper's Jenny is a complex and nuanced character, balancing fear and defiance in a way that feels very real. Mably's Tom is sympathetic and relatable, even when he is at his most manic. The rest of the cast is solid as well, with Catherwood doing an especially good job of conveying Adele's growing terror.

The movie is well-directed, with Smith making great use of the house's dilapidated and creepy setting. The camera work is often tight and claustrophobic, emphasizing the characters' sense of being trapped and isolated. The movie's sound design is also excellent, with eerie noises and whispered voices adding to the overall sense of dread.

One area where the movie falls a bit short is in its storytelling. Some of the movie's plot points feel underdeveloped or rushed, and the script sometimes relies on conveniences and coincidences to move the plot forward. The movie's ending is also somewhat ambiguous, and may leave some viewers feeling unsatisfied.

Despite these flaws, Spirit Trap is a solid horror movie that deserves to be more widely seen. It's a movie that will appeal to fans of psychological horror and atmospheric suspense, and it features strong performances and effective scares. Overall, it's a movie that is worth checking out for anyone looking for a good fright.

Spirit Trap is a 2005 thriller with a runtime of 1 hour and 31 minutes. It has received mostly poor reviews from critics and viewers, who have given it an IMDb score of 4.4.