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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 will laugh at Steel Trap. It has potential, but doesn't know what to do with it. Screenwriters Garbrielle Galanter and Luis Cámara (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.
The DVD includes a commentary track and a making-of featurette.
