It’s New Year’s Eve and a celebrity party is taking place on the top floor of an abandoned skyscraper. Five guests receive individual text messages inviting them to an exclusive party on the 27th floor. Two gate-crashers accompany the five as they emerge from the lift to find a kiddies-style party table set out with balloons and place names describing how their unknown host sees their characters (two-faced, etc). Initially amused and intrigued, they soon realise the lifts have become programmed death traps and there is no escape from the floor. In an attempt to survive, the group are forced to negotiate a series of deadly games. A masked psychopath is on the lose with murder in mind. But why has this specific group been targeted...

I realise that no film can be totally original in this day and age, but Steel Trap immediately brings to mind at least four obvious influences: Cube for bringing together a seemingly random group of individuals into a claustrophobic environment, Saw for the enforced series of deadly games, Theatre of Blood for the segment wherein Vincent Price plays a thespian who takes revenge on a critic by playing the part of a TV chef and cooking Robert Morley’s character's beloved poodles in a pie, and The Pool for the costume of the masked killer. In fact, the outfit is very similar to that of Sharez Jek in Doctor Who’s The Caves of Androzani, but without the masterful Robert Holmes writing and clever Graeme Harper direction.

Many other writers and directors have tackled this Ten Little Indians scenario before, at least half I’m sure coming up against the problem of how one of the group can be the perpetrator when there is at least one other character around to witness events. Steel Trap gets around this by borrowing the solution from Scream. The film is mildly entertaining I suppose, but average at best. The conclusion seems rushed, tacked-on as an afterthought and somewhat cheesy. With stereotypical and unsympathetic characters there exists little or no suspense.

5

Ty Power