Coroner’s Report: Steel Trap

Posted by Robert Fure (robert@filmschoolrejects.com) on July 17, 2008

Hello friends and welcome once again.  On today’s menu is Steel Trap, which hit the market this past Tuesday.  Is it something you’d be interested in picking up?  Looking at the cover we see a semi-battered looking girl.  She’s maneuvering through a steel trap of some sort.  Spinning razor blades abound, spikes punch from walls, danger is everyone.  Holy shit what is going to happen?

Nothing like what’s on the box.  In fact, I’m not entirely certain that the woman on the box art is actually in the movie.  She kind of looks like one of the actresses, but has been so heavily photoshopped that I’m not sure.  And there definitely aren’t spinning razor blades or anything dangerous like that.

So what actually happens?  Well it’s New Years Even and a random assortment of people are all in an abandoned building celebrating.  After awhile, a select group of people are invited to the “real” party a few floors down.  The guests include a washed up teen pop-star, a bitch and her boyfriend, a jerkoff, a way too polite lady, a chef, and a slut.  So its basically like one of my parties.  Now my descriptions may seem harsh, but soon each is identified by a name tag that clearly shows that they’re pigs, heartless bitches, and two-faced liars.  Soon, a mysterious figure is hunting them down and killing them according to their name tags and they’ve got to figure out why and more importantly, how they’re all related.

Kills

The body count settles in at around 7, so that’s pretty cool.  There is one cool kill and a couple of them that are cool in theory but kind of poorly executed.  All in all, the body count is only alright and they’re relatively spread out and somewhat rushed through.

Ills

The film starts off good in this area, we get a stabbing and some needlework on the lips.  There is also a pig head if that makes you queasy and immediately you start thinking about this being a Saw rip-off and you wouldn’t be all that too far off.  On paper, this is cool gore - hatchet to the face, arrow shots, hammer beatings, circular saw to the chest, heart ripped out, bashed heads, a hanging.  Sounds good.  However, we rarely get to see the kills fully enacted and the amount of blood flowing is actually pretty low.  Disappointing, really.

Lust

We get a slut who gives a blowjob off screen, but we don’t see anything at all.  Even the girls aren’t that attractive.  The slut, played by Anabelle Wallis, is cute but not Earth shattering.  Wouldn’t have minded some more of her though.

Learning

Be careful who you pick on.  This comes back to haunt a lot of people in horror movies.  Also, never follow secret games at a party!  Clearly you’re being lead away from the witness so that you could be slaughtered.  Never give up, either.  Too often people are confronted with a surmountable obstacle and back off.  For instance, in this film, they come up against what looks like a big piece of paper with a brick pattern on it that signifies a brick wall.  Now, that may have not been the real case, but it looked kind of flimsy.  I’m just saying, when the killer plays a game with you, forget the rules.

Review

First off, we’re either a few years late or a few years early for these Saw ripoffs.  First off, we’re told that “Surviving each floor is the name of the game,” and secondly, we get a severed pig head.  They should have just gone with something else.  The acting comes across uneven, as though the production was rushed, though with a low budget, it probably was.  The plot is relatively slow but I will give it credit for trying something new - we’re sort of tricked into thinking different people are the “main characters” for most of the film.  The amount of time invested in the different characters feels awkward though, letting us know something is up.  At the end, the transition comes from classic territory, but from way out in left field.  The whole thing, I feel, was going for clever yet fell short of that.  To fully explain the twist takes something like 3 minutes of exposition.  Not good.  Now the writing, I’m conflicted.  On one hand, its utterly terrible and gave us this masterpiece line:

“Signal blocked, what the hell does that mean?”
“It means someone blocked the signal!”

Are you kidding me?  Wow.  It wasn’t played for a joke either, it was dead serious.  On the other hand, though, we do come to completely hate every single character and really want them all to die in the worst possible way.  I’m not sure this was intended.  We’re also treated to this out of nowhere exchange that made me laugh out loud:

“It’s like being in a vagina.”
“Not my vagina.”
“Of course not, yours has teeth.”

If you think it might make more sense in context, it doesn’t.  Not really.  At the end of the day we have a fairly weak plot that cheats to get a surprise twist ending full of exposition and the kills, while awesome on paper, are poorly executed and the blood never gets flowing.  Further, I hated the characters.  Not in that way where you’re like “Wow I hate this complex character, I hope he gets what he deserves,” but in the “God Damn it, someone kill this bitch so she’s off screen and the movie ends.”

This is a definite pass.  I’m bumping it up from an F to its final grade because there was some ambition here and it does take a bit of a risk at the end, but ultimately the film is completely unsatisfying and mildly irritating.

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