The Mouse Trap
The Mouse Trap
Starring Simon Phillips, Sophie McIntosh, Mackenzie Mills, Madeline Kelman
Directed by Jamie Bailey
It's almost Alex's (Sophie McIntosh) twenty-first birthday, and her friends throw her an early birthday party at her place of employment, an arcade place, after hours. The friends enjoy games and get drunk, but unbeknownst to them there's a killer lurking about. The arcade's manager, Tim (Simon Phillips) is an avid "Steamboat Willie" fan and gets inhabited by an evil Mickey Mouse and dons the classic mask to go on a killing spree, leaving Alex and her friends desperate to find a way to survive.
"The Mouse Trap" does have everything needed for a fun, cheesy B-rated horror flick, but it's so dull it's hard to find it even appealing in an awful sense. That being said, this will be one of those movies I'll remember because I often remember movies that are exceptionally good or exceptionally bad, and this one falls in the latter category. It'll be one I show certain friends to enjoy the shtick, but never one I'd watch alone again.
The movie has so many plot holes it's hilarious. This evil spirit of Steamboat Willie...I guess?...inhabits a man and sends him on a killing spree, but there's no reason why this would happen in the first place. This killer also has the ability to teleport, but is stopped by flashing lights for some reason. The whole story is told from a survivor's point of view in a jail cell after the fact, even though she tells the detectives parts of the story she has no right to tell because she wasn't there when it happened. It's outlandish and stupid, which could've been saved by some over-the-top performances, but not even that happens here.
Instead the actors seem like people the director picked off the street because they could talk, and they exude no emotion whatsoever. When they find two of their friends dead, they talk about horror movies and the one ditzy blonde says, "I don't watch horror movies, I have a sex life." Literally right in front of her dead friends. There's no sense of urgency, no emotional turmoil, nothing whatsoever with any of these performances that make them stick out.
The characters fit the traditional tropes: the nice final girl, the ditzy slutty blonde, the darker blonde that's forgotten, the nerdy love interest, the jock, the horny couple, the goth, the stoner (it doesn't help that the stoner and jock literally look like twins). They do the normal stuff you find in a horror film such as splitting up, working together, trying to come up with a plan, and otherwise just getting dispatched quite easily.
The dispatching itself is laughably bad. When Mickey takes on a gang of ice hockey players (this was filmed in Canada, so everyone plays hockey), he doesn't leave a bloody print anywhere, leading me to believe he didn't even kill them (except the detective mentions it beforehand), because all he does is whack them with a hockey stick. The other kills aren't that great either, with about as much blood as you can fill a shot glass with...halfway.
Trying to capitalize on the public domain rights proved "The Mouse Trap" was too early for production, offering a lame outing that's barely worth watching, if only to make fun of its sheer incompetence - let's home the upcoming "Screamboat" will fare better.
The Score: D-
Comments
Post a Comment