Steel Trap



On New Year’s Eve, seven guests from a secret party being held at the top of an abandoned office building are invited to a special, even more secret “after-party” located on the 27th floor. When they get there they’re met with gaudy decorations and cheap, insulting name plates like “heartless”, “two-face”, and “pig.” Thinking the whole thing is some sort of elaborate prank, the group follows their mysterious host’s instructions to split up to complete what they think is some sort of cheesy treasure hunt. But things quickly go south when they all meet up again only to discover that one of their party members has been brutally killed. As they try to escape they realize that their “party” is really a very elaborate trap set up for all of the “guests”, and that they’re going to have to work together if they want to get out alive.



I feel like I’m really scraping the bottom of the proverbial barrel here looking for properly themed movies related to New Year’s. And this movie only barely qualifies since it’s only relation to New Year’s happens within the first few minutes, before being completely forgotten for the rest of the film. They did spend that time singing Auld Lang Syne though, so I guess it’s good enough. When you’re looking for such specific parameters, beggars can’t be choosers and all that. I do kind of wish I could have been a little more choose-y though, cause honestly, the film’s not all that great. But I guess you’re going to get that when you have a German produced production filled with mostly British actors doing their best to sound American.


Don’t look at me like that. You brought that criticism on yourself.

The movie feels like a cheap cash-in of the Saw franchise, crossed with something like Shakma. You’ve got a group of people, they’ve clearly all been singled out, they’re all either assholes or morally ambiguous, they’re all trapped in a series of confined spaces by some psycho who has obviously gone through some serious levels of obsessive compulsive planning in order to try to kill them, and there’s a twist ending. Which all sounds fine, but then you have to remember I said this was a “cheap” cash-in. So don’t expect any cool traps or clever mind games here. If you see the DVD cover with the hot chick surrounded by saw blades and get excited, don’t. That cover is a lie and there isn’t anything even remotely close to that seen in the film. And the closest you get to the movie being clever is that the killer does start off the “game” by using children’s nursery rhymes for its initial clues to add an extra level of creepy to the proceedings. But after using that angle a grand total of 2 times, the movie completely forgets what it was doing and gives up on the clues.


Please enjoy the bright, pretty colors before everything turns into blue-tinged, dreary death.

Instead, the proceedings are taken over by your standard, faceless slasher villain, who dons some sort of black gimp mask and hides in the shadows. Which would also be fine, except then that would make this one of the dullest slashers ever. Granted, it does start off okay, with the first guy being killed by being hung upside down and bled like a pig. But the thing with successful slashers is, typically you have to UP the tension, violence and dread with each subsequent death. And sadly, this film just cannot do that. You can tell that it wanted to. I mean, you can practically FEEL their desire to use Saw or Hostel levels of icky ooey-gooey goodness. But like I said, the movie is cheap. They clearly didn’t have the budget to match their ambition. So people are killed in either ridiculously easy ways, killed just off screen, or they’re killed on screen, but with a lot of close-ups and quick editing to keep all the blood and guts they want to show you at a minimum. I mean, they couldn’t even spring for one single trap. They do try to convince you that the elevators are trapped, and one lady does die in one, but for the life of me I have no earthly idea how the hell that “trap” was supposed to have worked. Like, she got in, the doors closed, she screamed, the doors opened, and then she’s hanging by some wiring that’s coming from outside the elevator. I mean…how the fuck did that happen? How do you rig wires to slide down and hang someone like that without the full cooperation of the victim? Or if the killer was supposed to have done it, how did they get in there, hang her, and then get out without any signs or sounds of struggle? I swear it might be one of the most puzzling deaths I’ve seen in one of these things..


Seriously, WTF? The killer isn’t nearly skilled enough to pull this off. How did you get up there?


*snort*

So the poor movie is cheap, and dull, and has a highly predictable twist ending (Seriously, I was able to peg the killer in the first 5 minutes). Thankfully, the actors are all serviceable enough in their respective roles. But of course the film’s cheapness means that all said characters are annoying as hell and have dialogue to match. I mean…It’s pretty bad. But at the same time I can’t say I wasn’t highly entertained by it, because these people spend almost 100% of the movie constantly sniping at one another like perpetually annoyed bitchy high school girls. It’s just amazing. They haven’t even known each other for 10 seconds before throwing catty comments at one another. And then people start dying and THEY’RE STILL slinging snarky comments to each other. You can totally see why the killer wants them all dead. Clearly these idiots wouldn’t be able to shut the hell up otherwise.


Like, my dudes, if you’d learned to read the room maybe this wouldn’t be happening.

So, uhhhhh…. Steel Trap is watchable? Is it sad that that’s the nicest thing I can say about it? It looks good, and sounds okay and…. Oh! I did like the rock cover of Auld Lang Syne they sang at the beginning. So there’s something. Other than that though the film is on the lower end of mediocre. On a technical level everything is fine. But the story, pacing, writing, and characters are thoroughly “meh”. It’s a shame they didn’t have the budget to do what they obviously wanted to do, which was to make a more claustrophobic Saw knock-off, because I can see fragments of potential throughout the movie. But they didn’t. So what we’re left with is a middling, though perfectly watchable, semi-competent film that’s ultimately uninspiring. If you need something easy to put on in the background over the holiday that isn’t going to be too distracting then this will fit the bill. Whether you end up plastered or not you likely won’t remember too much of it anyway.

Steel Trap is available on a variety of streaming services.

Steel Trap is also available on DVD.

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