Surviving each floor is the name of the game
Just when you thought New Year couldn’t get any worse….Seven adventurous partygoers find themselves trapped in a sadistic game of death after accepting an invitation to a mysterious party.
It’s New Year’s Eve, and a group of revellers are living it up on the roof of an abandoned skyscraper when five of the guests receive an intriguing text message. According to the sender, there’s an exclusive VIP party happening on the twenty seventh floor, and they’re all invited.
Once on the floor, however, the five guests and two party crashers quickly realize that they have fallen into a trap. The only way off of this floor is to follow a series of morbid clues left by a murderous psychopath. But who conceived these deadly games, and why have they targeted this specific group?
Revenge is a trap.
This was a bit of a surprise for us here at the Gay Sci-Fi Nerds Podcast Show as the check disc for Steel Trap turned up with a copy of Eden Lake (review to follow). Not one that I’d heard of, I decided to look it up on the Internet using all the usual sources, and well let’s just say they were mixed. Though mostly bad. We had a friend who is really into horror films,coming over for dinner and so we decided give Steel Trap a go.
With a promising idea, a cross between Saw and Cube, a group of people trapped in a building with a potential for a number of Saw like games the film was severely lacking in a number of aspects.
First of all where were the Saw like games and traps which the audience is led to believe there are? Each of the party goers are given place cards with nicknames such as Loser, Lover Boy, Heartless and Pig. A gruesome foreshadowing of the killers intent? Yes and no in a manner of sorts. The masked killer, who neither has the presence or memorability of any masked villain (think Scream, Saw, Halloween etc) , manually dispatches his victims. No weird or elaborate machinations resulting in a painful torture scene, before a blood splattering death. It leaves the self titled building woefully under used, some locked doors and a few electric barriers, shepherding the body count.
Next, the script, the acting and even the quality of the picture. They’re all bad and in fact so is most of the film. The dialogue is continually made up of one liners designed to make the characters look very cool, even when faced with being stalked in a sealed building with a psychopathic killer. The acting is either very wooden or barely tolerable, and don’t get me started on the scene where Georgia Mackenzie, playing Kathy, has to portray having a seizure. It was terribly acted and filmed from an unflattering camera angle i.e. the cameraman was standing right over her with the camera pointing directly on her face. It was laughable and not in a good way. The picture quality looks like it was made as a TV or direct to DVD movie and looked very grainy on our large TV. Perhaps a poor conversion from NTSC to Pal?
There are two death scenes which are good, more so because the others were generally adequate. However it is the twist and the ending that sets this above a number of other low budget horror films. It was expected and at the very least left us thinking “okay, not too bad”, rather than “oh god that was mediocre”.
That said, our horror fan friend spent most of the time texting on her mobile phone…
An average horror flick that fails to live up to expectation, but a good twist at the end leaves the viewer not too disappointed.
DVD Extras
Making of Featurette
Cast & Crew
Georgia Mackenzie: Kathy
Mark Wilson: Wade
Pascal Langdale: Robert
Luis Camara: Director/ Writer
Gabrielle Galanter: Writer
DVD Technical Information
Release Date: 15th January 2009
Distributor: Lionsgate Home Entertainment UK
Copyright: © 2008 Lions Gate Home Entertainment UK Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Running time: 89 mins
Aspect Ratio: Anamorphic 1.78:1
Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
Languages: English
Hearing Impaired: English for the hearing impaired
Cert: 18
