Steel Trap

I honestly don't think this was supposed to be a comedy, but we were laughing so hard at the ridiculous dialog and acting in the beginning we were in tears. The writing is so bad. And the actors, I looked some of them up and can't believe that they had regular acting gigs after this. They are all British and some have been in fave British shows of mine. I'm thinking they must have been background characters with no lines, it's the only way!

After awhile, the comedy wore off as the characters continued to be obnoxious and you couldn't wait for all of them to die. Unfortunately, the death scenes weren't great. If you are going to have a poorly acted script, have some good deaths. No such luck as most of the death scenes are quick to cut, and what you do see is D rated fake! The twist ending wouldn't have been too bad if the rest of the movie didn't suck.

Btw, the cover of the movie is completely inaccurate. First off, whoever is on that cover is not even in the movie. Secondly, the cover makes you think it will be a Saw-ish type movie where the characters have to escape elaborate death traps in rooms. Not at all true, and I felt hoodwinked!

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")

Pay no attention to the cover art, there are no spinning saw blades, and I'm not sure who that woman is supposed to be. In any case, if you need a horror movie for New Year's Eve, you could do worse than this one. It is generally enjoyable, and actually stays truer to the New Year's Eve theme throughout the movie than Bloody New Year (1987) which got kind of Christmas-y in the middle. Anyway..

The movie opens on a New Year's Eve party complete with a rock performance of Auld Lang Syne on top of an abandoned office building. 5 people & 2 party-crashers who come along are diverted to a "VIP" party on the 27th floor by text message, where they find strange surprises waiting for them. As they split off to solve riddles, the killer starts picking them off in twisted ways.

The production values are good, and personally I think the acting is not bad. The writing is kind of crap though. The initial character responses make no sense. Upon discovering place cards that insult each of them, they are too excited about digging into cake rather than being suspicious. The dialogue is frequently bad. The characters go nuts rather quickly, and the "guy you now hate" is clearly reaching to make you hate him, going off about everything that is too stupid to go off about.

But overall the movie is enjoyable. The level of psychotic is fun. It somewhat reminds me of the 2001 movie Valentine. If you liked Valentine, you'll probably like 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