the only reason I tried out this movie was because it had the EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon) gimmick attached to it. I first saw this in a horror movie "White Noise" 2004 with Michael Keaton and it was fun, even a bit scary for how young I was at the time.The people making this film seem not to understand what EVP even is. Of course it's not a real thing --- there's no such thing as ghosts --- but the idea of the phenomenon, being able to hear very faint voices in static or empty background noise of audio recordings, is a fun and scary concept to play with. This film seems not to understand this at all, as every instance of EVP that is shown involves no soft, barely audible sounds that might be voices, but some loud as hell stereotypical "demonic voice" clearly and unambiguously speaking words, easily understood and understandable just by turning the volume up slightly.On top of that the film seems to give up on this gimmick around half-way through and begins to resort to the stereotypical haunting gimmick, with visual hallucinations and spooky dreams. Just listening to an EVP once seems to cause the demon to just instantly attack the person and try to kill them. No subtlety, no suspense, no slow-burn creepiness, just a full-blown Big Scary Face In A Mirror and then kill.Underlying the failure of the main gimmick, the writing and dialogue is abysmal. It's so terrible it's impossible to tell if the actors are genuinely bad or just too inexperienced to make anything worthwhile out of the script

Trace is a movie with an interesting premise; it follows the trend of chasing paranormal activity through electromagnetic disturbance which is well beyond the human sound range. A few friends decide to get together and test out some equipment while mid-party. Things go awry as the friends slowly die one by one. It is revealed that the EVP (recordig) that was made on the party night, has a list of people and the order in which they will die in. They start to die in that order.The rest of the movie plays out in typical fashion. It is very dull, lackluster and feels like it could have had more done with the plot. More importantly many of the death scenes do not have anything climatic happening; a few of the turn into simple suicides or murder by accident. The entire premise is that a demon has been called from the other side (Asgaroth) and is now picking off people one by one so that he can gain power and cross over into the other side. The movie reveals that it is a prank, but it turns out the demon appears anyway. His debut is computer rendered, but doesn't look too impressive and I had to say it was a bad movie throughout.This movie does not feel much like horror and I do not recommend this movie for anyone but die-hard horror fans.Review originally posted to Orion Age (http://www.orionphysics.com/? p=10454)

First off, this movie isn't scary. It doesn't have any suspense leading up to the kills, a dreadful atmosphere, or a eerily told story. If you're looking for gore, there is none here. Nothing in this movie is gory. If you're looking for suspense, as I said, it's not here. What is here in abundance is bad acting. Throughout the movie I kept saying, "God, that's some terrible acting." If you want to watch a movie filled with actors who aren't any better than you then by all means watch "Trace."Another thing I didn't like was the swaying cam. That's where the camera isn't shaking but not steady. It kept jarring me out of the movie because it was painfully obvious the cameraman was tipsy. I don't like watching scenes with people lying in bed and the camera is swaying constantly. But that's the type of stuff I saw. The camera was still for less than 30% of the time. I couldn't get into the movie at all.Lastly, the kills were too abrupt to be scary. That's what I don't like about modern horror. There's no suspense leading up to the kills where you're tensing up, thinking, "Oh, this douchebag is gonna get it." Instead, they victim just gets stabbed out of nowhere and the impact of his death is too sudden to feel any emotion about it. In this movie, some of the kills are off-screen and the ones that are on screen aren't original, innovative, or surprising. The characterizations are so lame and the kills so boring that I couldn't even muster up the strength to say, "Meh." when someone got killed. All in all, there's no point in watching this movie. No suspense, no gore, no nudity, no interesting characters, nothing.

As I said, while this lil' horror flick may not be mindblowingly scary, or add a "new" level of fear inducing cinematic magic, it does however manage to work in delivering a few thrills and entertainment throughout its short runtime.I know that I'm quite likely to be in the minority with a positive review for this lil' film, but in all honesty I did enjoy this movie, and unlike the majority of horror films these days this one was able to hold my attention throughout. It's a sad day in the horror genre history when one finds themselves hitting the fast forward button more often than not when "attempting" to watch the entirety of a horror film..yet, thats exactly what I find myself doing time and time again when trying to just make it through a film to the end. ..and that is downright pathetic that this is the "norm" for us horror genre fans.. Instead of attempting to make it all the way through to the end of a horror film(and by any means possible even scanning/fast forwarding through large parts of a film)..one should be clicking to check the runtime left and just hoping and praying that it doesn't come to the end because you find yourself loving every minute of the thrill ride that comes from viewing really good horror films.So, while I am not at all claiming that the movie, Trace falls into the latter category of being a thrill ride that the viewer doesn't want to end, it does however manage to "work" in at least holding my attention throughout, as well as my feeling no desire to scan/fast forward through large parts of the movie.