Film review - Spirit Trap (15) with Billie Piper (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Film review - Spirit Trap (15) with Billie Piper

SPIRIT Trap (15) is not a particularly good film. But for those of us watching Billie Piper's acting career with interest, it is definitely a step in the right direction.

The young star has earned rave reviews for her role as Doctor Who's assistant on prime time Saturday night TV and on the strength of that, it would appear the world is her oyster.

Certainly the film world is beckoning and Spirit Trap marks Billie's first leading movie role, after a small part in last year's disappointing The Calcium Kid.

Spirit Trap is not going to set the world alight, and it won't see Billie challenging Keira Knightley as Britain's number one screen queen.

But one has to admire her softly softly approach, picking the right roles to suit this stage of her career and not charging headlong into the first project that takes her fancy.

Spirit Trap is a low key supernatural thriller which is going to win no prizes for originality. But it has its moments.

Five students Jenny (Billie), Tom (Luke Mably), Adele (Emma Catherwood), Nick (Sam Troughton) and Tina (Alsou, a Russian singer making her movie debut) are thrown together in a big, ramshackle old house in north London.

Each seems to have a dark secret, all of which come to the surface when a mysterious "spirit clock" starts to tick again, and the house's own bloody past reveals itself.

Spirit Trap is a brave attempt to breathe life into a tired old horror movie staple, but rather than a gripping teens-in-peril fright fest, we get something more akin to the Famous Five meet Scooby Doo.

The ghost story at the heart of the film works well and actually provides a satisfactory denouement.

But otherwise it relies too heavily on cliche to get by there is a dark, cobweb-covered cellar, and a dark cobweb-covered attic, plus obligatory weird dream sequences and half-glimpsed reflections in mirrors.

The budget restraints also show, with the interiors in particular failing to convince and looking way too much like ready made studio set.

But the young cast works hard, and Billie's promise continues to shine. It's onward and upward, Ms Piper.

Rating 4/10