THE MOUSE TRAP - Oh Mickey, What A Pity! (Canada, 2024)
Maybe we don't understand (and yes I know that song has nothing to do with Mickey Mouse!)
First there was Winnie, then there was Cinderella.
And now there is Mickey. The new “star” of a horror slasher movie that’s going to split audience opinion right down the middle.
Gettid? Split! Because, you know, slasher movie…
OK, bad joke not a good way to start this review.
And you know what, the movie doesn’t get off to a good start either with this painful Star Wars style text crawl making sure that everyone knows this movie has nothing to do with Disney. That’s cool and all, but it didn’t need to be almost 90 seconds long.
Luckily that forced humour doesn’t last long and instead it’s replaced by actual humour. Indeed, unlike the previous public domain horror slashers, this one is a comedy horror. Who's laughing though?
While the movie might be funny to some, it’s style of presentation might be annoying to most. It’s that awful flashback style where the movie is told from the perspective of a survivor at a police station. And I’ve got a feeling that this is post-production/post-test audience result, as the original trailer and the one released a week before the movie came out had wildly different vibes as well as a name change.
PLOT
Set in the after hours of an amusement arcade, a group of friends arrive to throw an early surprise birthday party for Alex, who unfortunately also works there! But hey, she’s getting paid to attend her own party so that’s something unique.
When Alex decides she wants to kick her party along to a bar, they all discover they’re locked in the arcade with no mobile phones.
They start looking for their lost friends who went off to have sex in the jungle gym, only to discover a person wearing a Mickey Mouse mask, who is afraid of strobing lights, is hunting them down for seemingly no valid reason.
ABOUT THE FILM
Acting! Movies like this live and die on acting. I can put up with an average movie if the acting is good, but when half of the cast can’t act, it really kind of ruins the film.
Main character Alex, goth girl Rebecca and Detective Marsh are great - the rest of them - oh boy.
There is a lot of ADR in the film - a lot of dialogue has been redubbed which really does make me think this is not the original movie the director had made. And then it makes me wonder how bad that film was.
Disappointingly it seems that the biggest thing that was cut out were the actual kills. So many characters in the first half of the film die off screen.
Add into that the stupidity of some of the characters - like the girl who goes off to play a VR game when they should be looking for a way out - and what we’re left with is a film that feels like it had something else to offer but for some reason was completely neutered. Could the fear of Disney have changed this movie so much? Could it also be why there is such a long disclaimer at the start of the film?
One last thing: I used to work in an arcade for 9 years. It was never as dark as what’s portrayed in the movie. Also, where were all the good games like Daytona, Dance Dance Revolution, Street Fighter and Time Crisis 2! Modern arcades suck!
OVERALL THOUGHTS
I don’t believe that this is a proper cut of the film. There has to be another one out there, one has actually has the slasher element I am looking for.
Using my patent pending GHOST rating, which stands for Great Horror or Stupid Trash, this movie only gets 2 ghosts. I don’t like those police interview scenes and I don’t like the way the film ended, but there’s definitely something there that could be salvaged with a director’s cut that restores what’s missing.
I can’t believe I am saying this, but I wish Jagged Edge made this film instead.
But as always, what did you think of it?
Genre Horror Slasher
Director Jamie Bailey
Starring Simon Phillips, Nick Biskupek, Sophie McIntosh
Original Title Mickey's Mouse Trap
Alternative Title Mouse Trap
Country of Origin Canada
Release Date 6 August 2024
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Couldn’t agree more. The kill scenes they did have were trite and straight out of a made for tv type horror. No originality. There is nothing the director could do to make this film better except to rewrite the script and get new actors that could act and not look like they were just picked off the street. But as bad as this is In A Violent Nature is as bad or worse. Try The Omicron Killer. At least the practical affects and kills and story to me were more interesting and not a super natural horror but horror if a real person became a serial killer.