Trappola d'acciaio

Five people are lured away from a New Years' Eve party on the rooftop of an abandoned building, with the promise of a more interesting party just a few floors below. Joined by two party crashers, these unfortunate individuals are made to play games by a stealthy psychopath. This person is sadistic, which is to be expected, but what isn't expected is their apparent sense of whimsy. Our protagonists often spend their time sniping at each other in this ultimately lame survival thriller.

Very annoying characters populate this hackneyed, nondescript story, which can't work up any surprises that are worth a damn. The direction is nothing special, and the filmmaking in general lacks any features worth remembering. Some members of the horror audience may be expecting something more along the lines of a "Saw" sequel, but in truth, while the movie is somewhat sadistic it's never overly gory. The dialogue is highly uneven - while, at times, it's actually fairly amusing, most of the time it's incredibly tiresome.

The no-name cast isn't really talented or engaging enough to create much interest in these inane victims. One might not necessarily hate them, but it is sure is hard trying to care what happens to them. Even our villain is instantly forgettable.

At the end, it's really immaterial how things get resolved; this viewer was just glad it was over.

Five out of 10.

During a New Year's Eve party in a closed office building, the successful chef Kathy King (Georgia Mackenzie) and the guests Wade (Mark Wilson), Robert (Pascal Langdale), his fiancée Nicole (Julia Ballard), Melanie (Annabelle Wallis) and Adam (Adam Rayner) are invited to a VIP party on another floor by a mysterious guest. The party crasher Pamela (Joanna Bobin) joins the group, and they find riddles and a weird decoration on the floor. Sooner they learn that they are trapped and without any way out from the floor and their host is killing them, one by one.

"Steel Trap" is another stupid and absurd slasher, with awful and aggressive dialogs – most of the women are called "bitch" or "slut" without any reaction; non-likable characters; unbelievable situations in an abandoned building where all the floors are neat and operable; excessive use of clichés; and a lame, ridiculous and absurd conclusion. My vote is two.

Title (Brazil): "Armadilha de Aço" ("Steel Trap")

If you're looking for a horror movie that is just simple and a bit "mindless", then Steel Trap may just be for you.

I'll admit, I was only interested in this movie because I loved the PS3 game Heavy Rain, and when I discovered Laurence Pascal was in this movie, I had to check it out.

Its starts off interesting with the use of children nursery rhymes to try to add a scary element to the movie, but then half way in, decides to forget about it. The title of the movie, and the cover, does throw you off. The scene in the cover never happened in the movie, and the movie didn't really had any traps. It tries to draw you in by making you believe it's going to be a unique horror film, but ends up being another slasher movie. I did not have an issue with the acting as much as I did with the script. It seemed like the writers were trying too hard to make the characters sound "American" with the overuse of profanity and the poor choice of dialog. Along with the poor development of the characters' back story, it made the characters seem too unrealistic and unlikable to the point where you most wouldn't didn't favor anyone enough to hope they survive. This did hurt the movie towards the end of the film, when things were being resolved, as all the pieces of the puzzle didn't add up well enough for me. The movie even tries to hint itself at the ending and the killer, but as stated before, the lack of story development hurt the film's chance to give you that "oh my gosh" ending it was trying to go for. It wasn't a horrible ending, I just felt it could have worked itself to it better. As with Saw, the film tires to teach you a lesson at the end, but seems like the idea was thrown at the end to try to give it some explanation and closure.

The film lacked a lot of substance, but on the plus side, the film was very simple. As I said, it was very mindless. Not overcomplicated, nothing too confusing thrown at you, honestly, Steel Trap is good if you just want a B or C rated horror movie to throw in the DVD player on a night you don't have anything better to do.

Overall, good for a one time watch.

Ten years after his first short director Luis Camera made his first effort to make a full feature in the horror genre. It succeeded on part of the effects but storywise it wasn't what it should be.

When they see the first victim which is one of their friends they just never scream, they just look at the body hanging upside down without any fear. But when they see a bit further that their cell phones are blocked they do scream. So, stupid characters and a bit of wooden performances.

The director wanted to make a torture porn but in stead it turned out to be a slasher. But I didn't liked the way it was edited, there are a few jumps that you might think gore was left out even as I have seen the uncut version.

Sometimes you see for example an ax going into a head, other killings are off-camera and that's what downgrades this flick. Another thing that tears it down is for example one being stabbed by a knife but after a few moments he talks again like nothing is going on.

Due the gore added it is still watchable but it do has some stupid situations.

Gore 2/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 3/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5

It took several sittings for me to make it through this movie, but it must have been passable, since I didn't abandon it.

A handful of people leave a New Years party for another party on another floor. They all get trapped on the floor, and characters start getting picked off.

Could be fun.

The main mystery in a story like this is the question of what the killer's motive is. That usually can be figured out once the characters figure out what they have in common. Instead, the characters mostly seem to abandon trying to figure out why they're in the situation, who their antagonist is, or what they can do to save themselves. They also spend a lot of time splitting up into groups.

The reviews seem to pay a lot of attention to the kills. They mostly seemed irrelevant to me. Most of them are off-screen. No particular tension there.

The dialogue is strange. I can't put my finger on it, but there are occasionally lines that jump out as being unusual. Even when the dialogue isn't weird, it's campy.

What I found most annoying was the picture quality. It's shot competently, but the lighting was clearly an issue. Since most of the movie takes place under low-light conditions, the picture quality has real problems. There's a lot of grain, a certain haze over most of it. Normally, I would ignore this, but it is present in almost every shot in a hallway, which accounts for around 70-80% of the movie.

The eventual reveal at the end is okay. I think some people would like it, some people will hate it. I think it would have done better with a little more setup.