Lavender

Trauma certainly has its moments, a bold beginning, a rather dramatic ending, and a solid story development. At times in the middle I did find myself losing a little bit of interest, as it did delve into the realms of boring at times.

I'm surprised that this film has awful and amazing reviews, to me it's very middle of the road, there's nothing particularly shambolic here, it's nicely edited, well acted, but the main flaw it has, is it's overwhelming obviousness, you just know exactly how it's going to pan out, why, and who is at fault, there was no other possible outcome offered up.

It's watchable. 5/10

In 1985 ... the mother is killed, one of the daughters survives. Not much later the police arrives. Who called them?

I read on here that some think it is a horrendous movie and others think it's a very good movie. It's none of the above. Saying it's horrendous is ridiculous because it isn't that bad. Saying it's a very good movie is also ridiculous because there are way better movies in the same genre then this one. It's an average movie worth watching once and then forget about it. The cast isn't bad. All actors did their best playing their respective characters. It's just the story that could have been better. It's all a bit guessing what happened but it's just a bit too slow and too long before you get some answers. They try to make it creepy but it isn't really and that's why it's just an average movie for this genre.

Lavender has the potential to be an interesting, intriguing ghost story, but it never quite hits the mark. Entirely too predictable, if you cannot guess who the villain is you're either not paying attention (who could blame you?) or you've been sheltered from the last 60+ years of thriller/horror stories. To suggest it is Hitchcockesqe is an insult to Alfred, for he would have certainly done more with the script. Overall, the movie is adequate at best but, it is far from the worst and worth watching if you haven't anything better to do. If you are taking off work for an actual sick day, this film is worth watching if for no other reason than it will lull you to sleep.

Those who don't understand this genre have no business writing reviews for it. The story is beautifully crafted as a psychological revelation that presents itself to a young woman who has a traumatized childhood but does not remember it. Her mind helps heal itself by gifting her little pieces of repressed memories, one at a time. These pieces appear to us, and to her, in the form of tiny gift packages tied with a red ribbon. The people she lost, the same ones from her repressed memory present themselves to her as strangers and apparitions she chases to get to a complete recovery of her mind and memory. A literal translation of those memories would be ghosts but that depends on how you choose to see it. Right until the end it could very well just be a drama unfolding itself in her mind, right until her daughter seems to know things she has no business knowing about. That's when the ghosts become real. This movie has the perfect amount of spookiness and everything makes sense. By the end of the movie every bit falls together like a sweetly solved puzzle.