Trauma is a rather curious film which promises a great deal, seems to deliver, but which, on reflection, doesn't really deliver at all. In a nutshell, Colin Firth is the husband who had a crash in which his wife apparently dies, and who can't come to terms with her death. The backdrop to this personal tragedy is the mystery of the murder of a pop star who was beaten up, stabbed and Lord knows what else, and whose body is found in a canal in East London. There is, at first, no apparent link between that murder and the apparent death of Colin Firth's wife, but slowly links seem to be made, and by and by it is suggested that it seems our Colin might well have done the deed. Apparently. And the words 'apparent' and 'apparently' are rather apt here, because nothing is quite as it seems. Colin, lucky chap, is adopted by pert Charlotte, played by Mena Suvari, who is the landlord's daughter and who tells Colin that she is keeping an eye on the place, a former hospital which is - again apparently - being converted into East London yuppie apartments. (Incidentally, no other tenants are ever seen and nor is there any evidence that building work is ongoing. The old hospital resembles both an abandoned building site and a skip.) And the impression is also given that Charlotte merely the figment of grief-stricken Colin's imagination. And so on. It is, in fact, rather futile to embellish on that resume, because much of it is irrelevant. Why, for example, the emphasis on Colin's near-obsession with ants? Well, the simple answer is that such an inexplicable obsession plays rather well in a horror film. Why the suggestion that much of what is happening is all in Colin's imagination? And how to explain Charlotte's apparent - that word again - naivety? Anyone over the age of 16 who has spent more than a week in any city will know that such trust as she demonstrates is lethal - and naturally she ends up dead. Then there's the slightly spooky janitor who had previously worked in the hospital before conversion work started and who has a thing about the hospital morgue in the basement. What is his role? Well, it is simply to be the film's slightly spooky janitor, because such characters are never out of place in a horror film. There is, however, far, far less to him than meets the eye. The odd thing is that while writing this I'm feeling ever so slightly guilty, rather like the guilt you feel after admitting that the ugly sister you're rather fond of is really no looker. You see, although from the off Trauma is rather baffling, it has the knack of drawing you in, you go with it, you are intrigued as to where it will all end. And that means Trauma has already achieved a lot, lot more than any number of oh-so-formulaic Hollywood schlock on far bigger budgets - you know the kind of thing: I Saw You Scream Last Summer VI. In fact, despite my carping, Trauma can more than hold its own. Its difficulty is, I think, that it sets itself higher standards, and although it achieves far more than the formula stuff, it doesn't quite get to where it wanted to. I am prepared to accept that it was filmed on a shoestring and on location, but that is no criticism. Clever cinematography makes a virtue of the fact that the only set the producers could come up with was the old hospital being converted into yuppie flats, and that cleverness with using limited resources also means that it looks a lot more expensive than I'm sure it actually cost. Elsewhere in reviews of this film you'll get the usual IMDb extremes from this being quite possibly the best horror film ever made to lamentations that the viewer spent more than a milli-second of rubbish such as this. One reviewer even goes as far as to claim that Trauma is definitive proof that we Brits simply can't make horror films. But ignore both extremes, for despite its faults, its illogicalities, its short-changing in the facts department and a rather over-wrought denouement, Trauma is a lot better than many of its Yankee rivals. But it isn't quite as good as it might have been. You'll only be really disappointed if you go along hoping for the usual expensive, glossy dross which Hollywood can turn out by the mile. It is a lot better than that.