The Mouse Trap review
The Mouse Trap isn’t here to ruin your childhood. It isn’t here to improve your present either.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers
The Mouse Trap
Directed by Jamie Bailey
Screenplay by Simon Phillips
Starring Sophie McIntosh, Callum Sywyk, Allegra Nocita, Ben Harris, Mireille Gagné, Mackenzie Mills and Simon Phillips
The Mouse Trap Review
The Mouse Trap begins with a text crawl explaining in explicit detail that Disney has nothing to do with this project. Beginning a public domain slasher movie with a wink while cribbing from another (also Disney owned) IP is a fun bit of business. It’s worth noting, however, that the latest movie from Jamie Bailey (Deinfluencer, What Lurks Beneath) was titles Mickey’s Mouse Trap until very recently. Disney may not have been returning their calls…but Bailey and company clearly didn’t want to provoke them any more than turning their beloved and valuable mascot into a vicious killer was already going to.
You may be wondering why so many of these freshly made public domain characters end up being used in slasher movies. I’m sure there is more than one reason…but the biggest one is probably pretty obvious. When you’re plucking a free use character with large name recognition from the ether…you’re most likely working with a very small budget. The hope is that placing a Winnie-the-Pooh or Mickey Mouse into your low budget slasher movie attracts enough attention to turn a profit. There’s a reason that slasher movies are a staple of low-budget filmmaking. You can make them (relatively) quickly and cheaply. They have a built-in audience. That audience isn’t expecting Citizen Kane.
We’ve covered two of Bailey’s movies before and a few patterns have begun to emerge. First, serving as his own cinematographer, Bailey’s movies always look great. When you find out how short the schedules or how small the budgets are…it becomes clear that Bailey gets more than his share of production value out of his talented eye. Second, these screenplays are probably (at least partially) reverse engineered based on the location available to them. Deinfluencer takes place in an empty warehouse. Its biggest issue was how little of interest the characters could do. What Lurks Beneath is set on a real submarine. The script finds every trick it can to utilize the interesting space. The Mouse Trap takes place at a state-of-the-art arcade. It’s a cool location for a slasher movie.
Alex (Sophie McIntosh) is stuck working late at the FunHaven arcade. There’s a private party heading in, and her co-worker has taken off. It turns out…that private party is a surprise birthday for Alex. Friends and potential lovers converge to drink and party. Unbeknownst to them, however…the arcade manager has been possessed by the for some reason evil spirit of Mickey Mouse (as seen in his public domain debut cartoon Steamboat Willie).
Ok…the MacGuffin that gets us to our killer Mickey is weird at best. The manager (frequent collaborator and The Mouse Trap screenwriter Simon Phillips) is a Mickey enthusiast. He already owns the mask that he will wear for the rest of the movie. Retiring to his office for a viewing of Steamboat Willie results in an unexpected event. An exposed wire gets wet…and he becomes possessed by a for some reason psychopathic Mickey Mouse. I’m sure there is a reason this random occurrence leads to a murderous rampage. I’m equally sure that I don’t know what it is.
The rest of The Mouse Trap mostly plays out the way you expect it too. That’s not a knock on it. Slasher movies have certain expectations for the audience that seeks them out. The Mouse Trap tries to use its location for everything that it can. It has strong setups with a kiddie coaster and a VR headset…but, for budgetary reasons, can’t quite deliver the punchlines. Many of The Mouse Trap’s kills happen offscreen. We get some throat-slitting and stabbing. It misses one of the great slasher tricks. When you can’t have wall to wall kills shots…open with a strong one. It’s easier to forgive cutaways when you open with something memorable. The Mouse Trap’s first kills happen off camera. Though, to be fair, it does save its best for last.
The Mouse Trap makes an interesting narrative choice by framing its story as flashbacks told by a survivor. Rebecca (Mackenzie Mills) relays what happened at this birthday party gone wrong to the police. You might dislike the way the story pops in and out of rhythm to support the structure…but it is an interesting way to do it. The movie hints that Rebecca isn’t always a reliable narrator. She wasn’t present for every story she tells, after all. It also allows the movie to hit fast forward on itself when need be. When Rebecca begins to recount Alex’s romantic interlude with her crush…the cops tell her to skip to the good stuff. It got a laugh out of me.
There is plenty of cannon fodder for Mickey to stalk around the arcade. If he seems like he can be in two places at once…well…he can’t…but The Mouse Trap has some fun with the old teleportation trope made famous by Jason Voorhees. There’s a perfunctory slasher story behind the public domain mask. Cell phones are collected…the characters find themselves locked in…suspects are discussed…dead bodies are discovered. The story even takes place on Friday the 13th. It’s nothing you haven’t seen before…but it keeps the necessary beats.
Unfortunately, the Mickey mask can only add so much. The character has some interesting quirks to it. The intention isn’t to ruin a beloved children’s character. In fact, there’s a strange reverence played to him…when viewed through a slasher lens, at least. It doesn’t take itself too seriously…though attempts at meta-humor mostly fall flat. It ends on a high note. A sequel is teased. I’m not going to pretend I won’t be watching if it teleports into existence.
Scare Value
In the end, The Mouse Trap is largely what you expect it to be. A low-budget affair that can’t pull off ideas that get too big. It’s a good-looking picture full of forgettable characters dying (mostly) unmemorable deaths. It does end with a bang. If a sequel ever materializes…you can meet it with the same shrug you’ll give this. And probably watch it.
2/5
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