THE MOUSE TRAP (2024)

Studio:   Gravitas Ventures
Director: Jamie Bailey
Writer:   Simon Phillips
Producer: Simon Phillips, Jamie Bailey
Stars:    Sophie McIntosh, Callum Sywyk, Allegra Nocita, Ben Harris, Mireille Gagne, Mackenzie Mills, Simon Phillips

Review Score:

---

Summary:

A mysterious killer in a Mickey Mouse mask stalks a group of friends locked inside an arcade.

---

Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Tim Collins, the manager of Fun Haven amusement arcade, informs his employees Alex Fen and Jayna that they must stay past closing to work a private party. Alex ends up alone when she agrees to cover for Jayna, who sneaks away to go on a date.

Tim retires to a room where he watches a vintage film reel of Mickey Mouse in "Steamboat Willie." Inexplicably, a supernatural aura compels Tim to don a Mickey Mouse mask as his possessed mind seemingly snaps.

The private event turns out to be a surprise party for Alex thrown by her friends Marcus, Ryan, Rebecca, Danny, Gemma, Marie, Jackie, and Paul. Jealous of Marcus's crush on Alex, Ryan secretly arranges for four friends from his hockey team to jump Marcus later that evening, because Ryan sees Alex as a "backup" girlfriend to potentially hook up with.

Jackie and Paul go off together to have sex. Mickey Mouse murders them both.

The group decides to move the party to a bar, but they discover the doors are locked, trapping them inside the arcade. Thinking Jackie and Paul are playing a prank, the friends split up to look for the couple.

Mickey knocks Ryan unconscious. Armed with a knife, Mickey next attacks Rebecca, but he is suddenly driven away when her flashlight flickers like a film projector.

A romantic moment between Alex and Marcus gets interrupted by Marie telling them she thinks Ryan is on a rampage. Meanwhile, Mickey goes to the bar next door where he uses a hockey stick to attack the four goons planning to beat up Marcus.

Alex, Marcus, and Marie confirm a killer is on the loose when they find Jackie and Paul's mutilated bodies. Following various encounters between the friends and the murderer, Mickey slits Gemma's throat, hobbles Rebecca by slashing her ankle, and stabs Danny in his head. Jayna returns to the arcade only to be murdered by Mickey outside.

Alex, Marcus, and Marie find Ryan recovering from his earlier assault. Mickey attacks Ryan until Marcus knocks him to the ground from behind with a baseball bat. Ryan tries pinning Mickey with a chair, but Mickey suddenly vanishes.

Amid the commotion, the surviving friends realize Mickey can somehow teleport. They also discover that strobing lights seemingly prevent him from using this ability.

Believing they know how to trap him, Alex, Marcus, Marie, and Ryan lure Mickey into a jungle gym room where they try freezing him in place with a flickering light. Unfazed, Mickey still teleports and decapitates Alex in front of her shocked friends.

Summoned by an alarm pulled earlier, firefighters eventually find Rebecca as the sole survivor of Mickey's massacre. Suspecting she might have been involved in the murders, Detectives Cole and Marsh question her in a holding cell. After she is left alone, Mickey teleports into the police station and frees Rebecca, who greets Mickey with a smile.

---

Review:

All aboard another public domain pain train! Tonight's conductor is none other than Mickey Mouse, whose debut film "Steamboat Willie" had its copyright expire in January 2024, landing Mickey on a list with Winnie-the-Pooh, Sherlock Holmes, and other fictional characters who are now free to be used and abused however anyone wants.

And what indie filmmakers want is name recognition so people will pay attention to their bargain bin B-movies. That's what happened for "The Mouse Trap" when it was originally announced under its previous title, "Mickey's Mouse Trap," a name worthy of online blurbs eager to trumpet a "slasher film featuring Mickey Mouse," yet legally tenuous enough that a Cease-and-Desist notice from the House of Mouse probably nixed the "Mickey" part.

"The Mouse Trap" acknowledges its exploitation of Disney's primary property with a 90-second "Star Wars" scroll that cheekily makes it clear Disney has nothing whatsoever to do with this movie. The sarcastic scroll also makes it clear that "The Mouse Trap" doesn't take itself too seriously, a warning sign that viewers are treading deep into microbudget moviedom.

Although they're complemented by a small handful of crewmembers, "The Mouse Trap" is a homegrown production essentially directed, written, produced, edited, and shot by two men, one of whom also stars as the killer. I'll give everyone involved this much: They set out to make a "real" movie, or at least as real as DTV on a dime can get. They just didn't do anything with the "Steamboat Willie" concept except slap a Mickey Mouse mask on some guy and call it a day.

Let's itemize a few of the movie's positives, since that won't take long to cover. The camera stays steady. Actors are lit with actual lights that also splash sets with vibrant colors. Limited though it may be, there's sincere technical effort displayed here beyond the slapdash point-and-shoot style so many similarly lower-level films usually settle for.

By far the biggest con, not including the initial one to sucker people into seeing this movie, is that "The Mouse Trap" doesn't have a story to speak of. No really, there's nearly no narrative at all. Nine friends get locked inside an impossibly spacious arcade where a man in a rubber Mickey Mouse mask terrorizes them. That setup is seriously all there is to "The Mouse Trap."

Since there's no story, "The Mouse Trap" bizarrely tries shaping itself into a mystery even though there's no mystery to solve. Intermittent flash-forwards frame the film as questionable recollections from Rebecca, the sole survivor of Mickey's massacre, while she's being questioned by two detectives who think she might be the killer for some reason. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to believe a petite goth girl might also be the burly dude in a black hockey jersey, especially when a scene specifically shows that guy inexplicably driven mad during a private screening of "Steamboat Willie," causing him to don the Mickey mask and go on a killing spree. The nine characters keep coming and going as part of their random actions, separating from each other for long stretches to suggest they too might be in on the mayhem. Again though, I don't know what good that does for a viewer who never has any question at all about the killer's identity.

"The Mouse Trap" doesn't even feature creative kills. Mickey mostly slashes at everyone with a simple kitchen knife, and much of that slicing and dicing occurs offscreen.

You know what else "The Mouse Trap" doesn't have? A proper ending. As though the production ran out of time, money, ideas, or interest (my money's on the latter two), the movie suddenly decides "enough is enough" and stops without even showing the deaths of three people. A post-credits coda sets up a sequel with a nonsensical epilogue where we learn Mickey apparently earned himself a Shawnee Smith-like accomplice. It makes about as much sense as Mickey's unexplained ability to magically teleport, which yes, is actually a thing in this film, and how he just pops out of existence whenever he's needed elsewhere.

Starting from a scatterbrained script that seems to have pages missing, and brought to banal life by uneven acting, "The Mouse Trap" is a "Mickey Mouse movie" alright, but primarily in the sense that it shows cheapness all the way around. It's a small mercy that my already fleeting memory of the film is likely to auto-delete from my brain faster than murderous Mickey can serendipitously teleport from a ball pit to a jungle gym.

NOTE: There is a post-credits scene.

Review Score: 30

---