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Luis Cámara’s Steel Trap offers up a tried and true (and, some might say, tired and truly timeworn) formula for a low-budget slasher flick: twenty-something protagonists trapped in an abandoned building, being violently picked off one by one by a tall, emotionless figure with a mask and a sharp implement. The trick with this genre is not to attempt originality but to inject the narrative with interesting characters, some neat little scares, and some bloody dismemberment that makes even your burger-chomping DVD buddy question his need for red meat.
It is possible within this genre to create something unique, if not original. Recently, in fact, there have been a spate of entertaining and even critically acclaimed (at least in the industry) low-budget slasher flicks stalking the direct-to-DVD market (and some have been given limited theatrical releases). Movies like Hatchet, Storm Warning, The Tripper, and my favorite (because I still enjoy irony), the mockumentary Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, have admirably kept the blood gates open for all of us horror fans. These fright features know they’re working with material that’s been seen a thousand times, yet they embrace their unoriginal and derivative natures. With Steel Trap, on the other hand, director (and co-writer) Cámara has put together a bland, badly written piece of b-movie that eschews invention and proffers some of the most forgettable characters ever to share space on a screen.
The premise is exactly as I’ve given above: at a New Year’s Eve party, five guests (and two gate crashers) get text messages, telling them to meet a couple of floors down for a private party. What awaits them is a cheap, mundane set and table settings with their names on place cards. All of the place cards have monikers like “Heartless,” “Two Faced,” and “Pig.” I think you get the idea. Pretty soon, these annoying and unsympathetic people (the writer attempts to give them flaws, but they seem forced rather than organic) start to die in an uninventive fashion—and according to the epithets on their name tags—at the hands of a tall, masked, and indifferent phantom (guess what becomes of “Heartless”).
The cast is a list of no-name character actors, all of whom (according to IMDb and the DVD’s making-of documentary) actually appear to be English actors putting on American accents. The dialogue, too, is so inane that it feels like everything was translated via three different languages before it eventually got to English. That’s probably not a stretch, considering that the director is German and the film was shot in Cologne—which is supposed to stand in for America. Why, I don’t know. These people could have kept their accents, and no one would’ve cared.
I’m sure the actors have talent. Some—particularly Georgina Mackenzie, who plays Kathy—have impressive résumés. But the script and direction they’re given here wouldn’t be considered prime showcase material. Even the final reveal and twist are nothing more than rehashed ‘80s slasher tripe.
Suffice it to say, Steel Trap is bloody unoriginal—and it’s a torture to watch.
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