If companies can still get sued for false advertising, I have a case against Dimension
Extreme. Steel Trap is anything but what Dimension makes it out to be. The DVD cover
art shows a woman inside a steel trap and the tagline reads, "surviving each floor
is the name of the game." One can only conclude that the film involves victims escaping
steel traps. Right?
Wrong. If Steel Trap was actually about surviving different floors of horrific traps
and surprises, it might have made for a decent Saturday night guilty pleasure. There
are no steel traps, though. Not one.
The movie begins with promise but quickly becomes a run-of-the-mill, below-average
serial killer flick. The victims are guests at an extravagant party at the top of
an abandoned building. A short while into the party, five of them receive text message
invites to a private gathering being held a few floors down.
Once the guests (and two uninvited crashers) arrive, they discover a well-decorated
room with name tags waiting for each of them. The tags read: Pig, Loser, Two-Faced,
Loverboy, and Heartless. The invited guests have been tricked. (Didn't see that coming,
did ya!?) A psychopath has locked them inside the abandoned floors, and their name
tags hint at the methods he will use to kill them.
Imagine a golfer with perfect form, but who stops swinging as soon as he makes contact
with the ball. It would be a disaster; spectators would laugh. And audiences wil
l laugh at Steel Trap. It has potential, but doesn't know what to do with it. Screenwriters
Garbrielle Galanter and Luis C�mara (who also directs) have good ideas, but they don't
follow through. Instead of expanding upon the lines the film draws for itself during
the first act, it scribbles off the page with the penmanship of a Kindergartener.
As soon as the first guest meets his demise, the plot loses all of its momentum and becomes
a frail clothesline for unmemorable slasher sequences.
Aside from the lack of steel traps, the film's other plot points disappoint, as well.
The guests do ascend and decend floors as the tagline suggests, but there are no
surprises or even traps in store, only a masked killer who chases them while they
scamper around like decapitated chickens. The nametag gimmick isn't developed thoroughly,
nor is it taken far enough. There just isn't much that makes Steel Trap worth a gander.
See Also
