In the ’80s, when the slasher film was all the rage, there was no real need to be different. The set-up and fright formula mandated a kind of carbon copy creativity. Just find yourself a haunted setting, a group of teenage rowdies, some random sex and drug/alcohol abuse, a moralizing murderer, and a last act denouement that provided a basis for the bloodletting, and you had a coattail cash box. Of course, as the genre grew, so did the number of mimics. Before long, the desire to be derivative killed the category. Now, nearly 30 years later, we’re seeing a kind of slice and dice revival. Too bad then that the lessons learned way back when are no longer part of film language rote. Instead, movies like Steel Trap appear destined to repeat this kind of horror movie’s many mistakes.
It’s New Years Eve, and seven partygoers in an abandoned skyscraper get a call to join another shindig. This one is very exclusive, and promises lots of thrills. So rock star Wade, celebrity chef Kathy, advice columnist Nicole, her entertainment attorney boyfriend Robert, TV exec Pamela, former child star Adam, and his coke whore arm candy Melanie all find themselves involved in a nursery rhyme filled game of life or death. You see, a masked killer is stalking each and every one of them, unflattering nicknames indicating the slayer’s possible motives. One by one, the guests are murdered, the cat and mouse means of destruction providing a high level of anxiety for those still on the “list”. Unless they find out who is behind the crimes, and why they want them dead, they will never escape this Steel Trap.
Steel Trap is the kind of film that substitutes creepy locations for plotting, and the slightest smatterings of gore in place of anything suspenseful or scary. To call it derivative would avoid its obvious attempts at being different, and yet this is nothing more than the standard slice and dice from 20 years ago, dressed up in a decidedly uninteresting set of the emperor’s new clothes. Give the killer a hockey mask instead of a bland black disguise, and lower the average age of the victims by at least one generation, and you’d have something akin to Friday the 13th: Jason Goes High Rise. While the DVD cover art (the film is currently available from Dimension Extreme, the Weinstein Company and Genius Products subdivision) suggest something like Saw or The Cube, there is nothing remotely inventive or puzzle boxy about this title.
First time feature director Luis Cámara, who co-wrote the movie with Gabrielle Galanter, would disagree with such an assessment. As part of the full length audio commentary offered in the digital presentation, he makes it clear that he finds his narrative rather inventive and particularly adept. He’s not foolish enough to believe he’s made some manner of classic, but there are indications that at least he sees beyond the simplistic elements being employed. The Making-of material provides minimal insights, mostly geared toward location issues and production problems. Indeed, it’s hard to hate on a film that tries so hard to be so unique and inventive. But Steel Trap tends to set itself up for such ridicule, even when it’s providing some minor moments of macabre.
Take the character of Nicole, for example. As played by Julia Ballard, this heartless witch is an unbearable presence, almost from the very first moment we meet her. Unfortunately, she grows even more grating as the storyline continues. It doesn’t help that our actress maintains a whiny, self pitying persona throughout. Ballard had never been in a movie before this, and it really shows. In fact, if you look at the female characters and discern who is annoying and who is mildly acceptable, some ‘killer’ clues can be gleaned from the otherwise repugnant red herrings.
Not that the men are any better. Thankfully, machismo man-ass Adam is killed right away. A little of his snow-snorting lothario goes a very long way. Sadly, rock God Wade is a minor deity at best, and Robert only exists to keep us from concentrating on those scream queening babes. Of course, a little well honed gore could cure a lot of what ails Steel Trap. Let the offal flow and we fright fans will forgive a great deal. The small amounts of claret offered, however, do little except aggravate. In fact, when juxtaposed against the cornball dialogue, this could be a bad b-movie from a time before terror grew a brazen backbone. Slack scares like this were a dime a dozen back when passion pits ruled the dread domain.
Cámara has to bear most of the blame. He is constantly using his camera like a scalpel, cutting into scenes with a quack butcher’s abandon instead of actually applying some nominal mise-en-scene. This is especially true of his murder sequences. Characters are caught by our villain and then…they’re forgotten about while we travel over to a couple of minutes of mindless exposition. Another glimpse of an upcoming death, and it’s back to more conversational stalling. We don’t feel any sense of urgency in what the director is trying to deliver. Instead, his plot plods along without a single significant reason to keep us glued to, or even going for, the edge of our seat.
It seems clear that, in an arena where the unoriginal and plagiaristic are typical examples of filmmaking fad gadgetry, Steel Trap is a slight horror effort. It’s professionally helmed and evocatively shot, but looking good is a far cry from actually being good. Instead, Luis Cámara deserves credit for the try, if not the win, and the slasher genre revival seems destined to sputter and die instead of building on some far more provocative European examples (Inside, for one). Macabre seems to be the one cinematic staple that can survive numerous subpar illustrations of its assets and still come out clean. Steel Trap isn’t about to chance that sentiment, but it won’t be bolstering said fear factors any time soon.