Traumatika Movie Ending Explained & Full Story: What Happened To Alice?

Underneath the veil of demonic infestation, Director Pierre Tsigaridis’ Traumatika explores the horrifying extent of unresolved childhood trauma, which can alter one’s course of life for the worse. While the visuals, set design, and jumpscares showcased in the movie seem to be heavily inspired by iconic horror game titles like the Resident Evil series and Amnesia, the scare factor doesn’t feel as effective as it should have. At times, the narrative feels a little disjointed, as it tries to conjure a cocktail of possession horror and slasher elements, but ultimately ends up undermining the serious psychological aspects the movie tries to highlight. Overall, Traumatika is a one-time watch if you have eighty-odd minutes to kill and enjoy the aesthetics of the aforementioned horror games.

Spoilers Ahead

The prologue section of Traumatika, which shows the origin of demonic infestation, will surely remind horror fans of The Exorcist, as the entity in the movie is clearly inspired by the legend of the demon Pazuzu. The prologue, set in the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt, in 1910, shows an Egyptian man crossing through the desert, holding a strange relic in his hand. The relic is a conduit of Volpaazu, an evil entity that specifically targets and corrupts children. The unnamed man, who seemingly lost his young son, Ashraf, under the malevolent influence of Volpaazu, continues to walk through the desert until his body gives up. Burying the statue in the sand, the grief-stricken father laments the demise of his son and seeks his forgiveness before plunging a dagger in his heart. The statue remains buried under the blood-soaked sand until almost a century later, in 2002, when it ends up in the possession of John Reed in Pasadena. 

John is having a tough time dealing with his divorce from his ex-wife, Charlotte, who seeks custody of their daughters, Abigail and Alice. Steve, John’s friend, who arranged the relic for him to sell, calls him and warns about the notoriety of the relic. Upon learning that John has his daughters with him at his place, Steve repeatedly requests him not to open the relic at any cost, as he fears that whatever malevolent presence is entrapped within it might get unleashed and put John’s daughters at harm. John doesn’t pay heed to Steve’s words as he shrugs off his warnings as pagan nonsense. He proceeds to open up the relic, which releases Volpaazu, and the entity takes a hold of John’s spirit. 

The narrative focus shifts on Abigail, the eldest teenage daughter of John and Charlotte, who appears withdrawn and is image conscious due to having a cleft in her lips since a young age. It is apparent that Abigail has faced trouble in her personal life due to her facial disfigurement, as she tries to keep her face hidden even while staying at her home. It would have been great if the narrative allowed viewers to learn a bit more about Abigail and her relationship with her family. Under the influence of Volpaazu, John rapes Abigail, and coerces her to keep the incident a secret from rest of the family. A traumatized Abigail is tormented by Volpaazu at night, which takes the appearance of a demonic form of her father. It is strongly hinted that while the narrative presents that John was under the influence of the demonic entity while he sexually assaulted his own daughter, in reality he might have been her tormentor even without the presence of a malevolent force. Throughout the movie, Abigail sees Volpaazu’s presence as John; the incident eventually breaks her mind, sends her on a dark, violent path, and ruins her life. 

The most vicious aspect of the cycle of violence and trauma is that not only is it inescapable, it also infects and traps people in a loop. Abigail leaves her house and takes refuge in a dilapidated house. In fear of prejudice and stigma, she isn’t able to reach out to anyone and suffers all alone. Upon learning of her pregnancy, the teenager mutilates herself to abort the child she had conceived. Abigail tormented by the spirit, tries taking her own life, and once again the spirit symbolizes the repressed trauma she couldn’t escape from. 

As Abigail has killed his progeny, the spirit threatens to subject her sister, Alice, to similar horrid treatment, which prompts a helpless Abigail to become the spirit’s servant in desperation to save her sister. She agrees to bring the entity a boy, who can be a vessel for the darkness it holds. Under the influence of Volpaazu, Abigail kidnaps a kid named Bobby and tortures him to death. As the child was unfit to become a vessel for Volpazzu, Abigail once again finds herself hunting down a young boy, and in the course of a year, she kills three boys whose corpses she stashes in the basement of the dilapidated house. Mikey, a young boy, gets abducted by Abigail, and the psychological torment he goes through makes him believe that she is his mother. On one occasion, as Abigail’s broken psyche/demon-possessed self starts acting up, Mikey calls 911 for help. A patrolling cop, Officer Miller, arrives in the house, and upon witnessing the horrors inside, he confronts Abigail, who brutally kills him. At that moment, Abigail briefly returns to her normal self and is overwhelmed with remorse. A distraught Abigail seeks an apology from Mickey, mentions that she was forced to act as the servant of the demon, and shoots herself to death in front of the kid. Needless to say, spending nine months in the hellhole, seeing the corpses of the three kids, and witnessing the deaths of Officer Miller and Abigail push little Mikey’s mind beyond the point of recovery. Mikey is rescued as the only survivor of the Pasadena Murders orchestrated by Abigail Reed, and he was never able to get back to his past way of life. As revealed later in the televised statements of his mother and psychotherapist, Mikey lost a part of himself in Abigail’s house of horrors and genuinely believed her to be his real mother. The PTSD and survivor guilt affected the kid in a horrible way and corrupted his worldview forever. It should be mentioned at this point that John Reed took his own life after learning about Abigail’s horrid actions, as he blamed himself for what happened to his daughter. 

The final segment of the movie – taking place twenty years later – shows Abigail’s sister, Alice, who has made a fortune by sensationalizing the life and exploits of Abigail. People gobble up anything involving serial killers and criminals; no wonder Alice’s distasteful book, “Mommy Monster,” based on the life of Abigail, has become an NYT bestseller. In a televised interview with popular talk show host Jennifer Kovak, Alice expresses remorse for what Mickey had to go through for the actions of her sister. Mikey’s life completely derailed after the harrowing experiences, and during the interview, Alice even hints at the fact that given how Mikey probably never recovered from his past wounds, he might have developed troubling tendencies. 

Jennifer turns out to be a shrewd showman who markets Abigail’s notoriety to boost her channel’s TRP, which triggers a guilty conscience in Alice’s mind. At night, which was coincidentally Halloween, she is visited by three children wearing white ghost costumes. As they leave after getting their treats, Mikey appears in a similar costume and forces his way inside Alice’s place, who is too shocked to stop him. Mikey, whose broken psyche subjects him to hallucinations of Volpaazu, believes his ‘mother’ Abigail was innocent and believes he is the chosen vessel of the demonic entity. A traumatized Mikey pleads with Alice to become his mother, and Alice manages to obtain the gun in Mikey’s possession to threaten him to leave. Mikey continues to hallucinate the demon’s presence and escapes, only to return later and brutally stab Alice’s boyfriend, Alex, to death, who came to her place to check up on her.

The ending of Traumatika is the weakest part of the movie, which completely throws the narrative off balance. Jennifer gets excited at the possibility of cashing in on the gruesome murder of Alex, given Mikey’s pent-up trauma and act of violence can be sold to the public as a continual effect of demonic infestation on the only survivor of the Pasadena murders. Jennifer instructs her associate, Diana, to arrange another interview with Alice by any means, not caring a dime about how the tragedy might have affected her. However, as Jennifer reaches the studio, she witnesses the havoc Mikey has caused by killing everyone present. Mikey, now donning a full-on slasher villain attire of sorts by wearing Alex’s delivery agent costume over his white ghost costume, chases Jennifer to kill her and eventually gets distracted by Alice, who arrived in the studio quite randomly. Alice tries to comfort a troubled Mikey, who eventually turns on her as well, and she is saved by Jennifer in the nick of time, who stabs him to death. The ending doesn’t make much sense, aside from probably highlighting the fact that Mikey didn’t like the fact that his struggle with mental health became a televised, commercialized product thanks to Alice and Jennifer. With Mikey’s lifeless body lying in front of her, Jennifer asks whether Alice is up for another interview with her, showing the shameless disregard she has for everything else other than her own profit. The question about demonic possession was not as integral to the narrative to begin with; still, the final moments of the movie show the statue of Volpaazu is still stashed in the basement of the dilapidated house where Abigail sought refuge. How it ended up there remains unknown, as it was last seen with John Reed. There is a possibility that the demonic conduit seeks out another set of victims in the future, as the ending strongly suggests.