STEEL TRAP

During a New Year's party in an abandoned building, seven people receive an anonymous text message inviting them to go upstairs with the promise of an exclusive and more exciting party. The seven guests, who all work in the entertainment industry, eagerly head to the party but soon discover they have fallen into the trap of a psychopath who hides a dark secret related to his guests. "Steel Trap" is a bad title for an equally bad movie. Although the viewer may immediately make a nomenclatural connection with some famous films with Bruce Willis or Steven Seagal, "Steel Trap" is not an action film, but a horror film with all the hallmarks of the slasher genre that copies "Saw" at the right time, now a true icon of post-2000 horror trends. From any perspective you want to look at it, "Steel Trap" is unsalvageable: amateurish, ridiculous, boring, and full of clichés. The plot, in fact, unfolds in a repetitive manner through a continuous sequence of murders, all very flat and unoriginal, interspersed with long, boring walks down the corridors, which provide an opportunity to stage dialogues that are chilling in their ugliness and banality. The "murder" factor is quite important for this type of film, and it is noticeable that even the makers of "Steel Trap" intended to focus on it almost entirely. In the end, however, the deaths in this film are heavily indebted to the films about the Enigmist, using traps that emphasize a form of punishment-contrappasso towards the victims, but the tortures staged in "Steel Trap" are all mild and too chaste, mainly interested in staging a quick body count devoid of any charm. The masked killer (yes, he wears a mask even though he almost never interacts with the guests!) is unimpactful, physically resulting in a cross between Diabolik and Fantomas seen in "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen". A veil of pity should then be cast over the fauna of puppet characters that populate this film, all incredibly and justifiably unpleasant but also banal in the delineation of guiding characteristics that make them connectable to their own faults, thus staging a macchiettistic and unbelievable group of victims with guilt. Another element that contributes to making "Steel Trap" a mess is the motive of the killer, hastily attached and identical to that already used in at least a dozen other slashers in the last 20 years, not to mention the entire structuring of the final climax which, if handled with greater professionalism, could have been spot on but in the end only results in very irritating. Unfortunately, "Steel Trap" does not save itself on a technical level either, as the low budget and the obvious inexperience/incompetence of director Luis Cámara contribute to the squalid staging that is especially penalized by a flat and sadly paratelevision photography and by a group of mediocre actors. In short, a disaster in every respect.