Steel Trap (2008)

Studio: Dimension Extreme

DVD Release Date: July 15, 2008

Directed By: Luis Cámara

Cast: Georgia Mackenzie, Mark Wilson, Pascal Langdale, Julia Ballard

Deadly DVD Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Review By: Marc Patterson

It’s New Years Eve in an abandoned high rise building.  A party is rockin’ at full tilt and midnight goes off with streamers and all the drunken fixins that come with it.  Then a few of our special guests receive a text message to ditch the party, head down to the 27^th floor and get jiggy at the “real” party.  The real party however, is a tad bit weird, and when an apparent scavenger hunt turns deadly, it’s every man and woman for themselves as a masked killer dispatches our characters one by one in an all too elaborately constructed rat-trap.

Oooohhhh… what a premise we haven’t seen since… well, since last month’s slasher of the month.  But, let’s talk about this for a moment.  The premise of the film is so preposterously elaborate that it’s the kind of set up only used by super villains in hokey circa 60’s spy flicks.  I mean, let’s think about this for a moment.  Five party goers at an abandoned building.  A separate floor has set up just for solely for these specific guests, who were guaranteed to be at this already exclusive party well in advance.  So the killer has to not only have a connection to the party upstairs, but probably threw the damn thing just to get these five people in the building at the same time.  Not only this, but they had to rig the cameras, build the traps, etc… There’s no one I hate enough to go to that length to kill.  Seriously, why throw such an elaborate party just to hack apart some people who’ve pissed you off at some point in your life?

Let’s forget this Looney Toons type set up for a moment and pretend like we might be able to simply enjoy this film on superficial level.  First, there are the bland characters that don’t have one redeeming quality to them.  Sure, there was the one little snarky columnist.  She was interesting until her strong feminine persona melted into a whining pile of mush.  Oh, and I had so much hope for her.  Then there was good old Kathy King, a Rachel Ray knock-off with about as much character dimension as a piece of paper.  Blah.  Oh and why is there always that one pathetic character who blathers relentlessly “I’m not even supposed to be here!”  Don’t answer that, please.  

All being said – let’s dig deeper for something of redeeming quality.  For a slasher, if we count on nothing else we can count on blood and violence.  Unfortunately for a film that pours on buckets of blood, it certainly doesn’t feature any real graphic violence.  Most of the visceral stuff takes place off screen, except for one scene involving the sewing shut of lips, another quick shot of an ax to a head, and a poorly slit throat.  Nothing that will even raise a hair on your arm though.  

Steel Trap was a technically sound film, and a good film, but not great.  It suffers from ridiculous set up, it isn’t exactly original, frightening, or overly inventive, but it does make for decent braincandy, which sometimes is exactly what you need.  Put up against any halfway decent slasher film from the 80’s Steel Trap holds its own.  But, we’re not in the 80’s anymore, so you be the judge.