Steel Trap is a 2007 horror and thriller film directed by Luis Cámara and written by Cámara and Gabrielle Galanter. Florian Moser composed the film's score. It stars Georgia Mackenzie as Kathy, Mark Wilson as Wade, Pascal Langdale as Robert, Julia Ballard as Nicole, Joanna Bobin as Pamela, Annabelle Wallis as Melanie, and Adam Rayner as Adam.
At a New Year's Eve party, five guests receive mysterious text messages inviting them to an "exclusive" party on the 27th floor of the building. Joined by two party crashers, the group soon realizes that they are trapped — and they aren't alone. A masked killer is stalking them, leaving behind twisted clues that lead them through a series of deadly puzzles.
Steel Trap provides examples of:
- All for Nothing:
- After Robert is drugged, Nicole takes his weapon to defend herself. This doesn't make much of a difference when the killer catches up to her, since she drops it before she has a chance to use it.
- Towards the end, Wade finds a knife on the table in the white room. He tries to stab the killer with it, only to discover that the knife is fake and has no effect on him.
- All Men Are Perverts:
- Adam flirts with and kisses Nicole during the party in the beginning of the film, despite both of them already having partners.
- Robert says he wants a "young and slutty" woman in response to Nicole trying to find him a woman to kiss at the party. Later, he asks if Melanie is looking for a new boyfriend in front of Nicole. However, his tone implies he was doing it to upset her on purpose, since he'd caught her with Adam earlier.
- Robert also accuses Wade of staring at him when the former is forced to remove his clothes so Kathy can remove the tracker supposedly hidden in them.
- Always Save the Girl:
- Robert immediately rushes to help Melanie when he hears her screaming in the elevator, with Wade not far behind. Unfortunately, they're too late to save her before the booby-trapped elevator doors close.
- Wade also behaves like this with Kathy. In the last act, he tells her to save herself and leave him behind, then puts his own safety at risk to rescue her when she's tied up by the killer.
- And Show It to You: How Nicole dies.
- Anguished Declaration of Love: Nicole doesn't say it outright, but she admits to an unconscious Robert that she would've said yes to his proposal, which has the same effect.
- Ax-Crazy: Kathy. She engineers a fake party that results in the deaths of five people, gives Wade a flimsy justification for her actions that really amounts to her holding a petty grudge, then murders him while giving the camera a Slasher Smile.
- Beneath Suspicion: Kathy pretends to be one of the trapped partygoers while hiring someone to kill her victims for her and setting it up to look like Robert is an accomplice.
- Blood from the Mouth: The killer spits up a glob of blood as Kathy beats him to death.
- Blood-Splattered Innocents: Melanie is splashed with a bucket of blood.
- Bludgeoned to Death:
- Wade accidentally kills Robert by repeatedly bashing his head against the floor.
- Kathy beats the killer to death with a meat tenderizer.
- Calling Card: The killer uses nursery rhymes as clues.
- Cell Phones Are Useless: Robert and Nicole discover that the floor they're trapped on does not have cell service, preventing them from calling for help when Kathy starts having a seizure.
- Chase Scene: Late in the film, Nicole is chased by the killer by herself, with everyone else either unconscious or dead.
- Covers Always Lie: One of the DVD covers (pictured above) shows a blonde woman splattered with blood, in a narrow passageway with rotating saw blades. Nothing like this happens in the film proper, with the closest thing being when Melanie gets covered in blood shortly before her death.
- Cruel and Unusual Death:
- Adam is stabbed in the throat and his mouth is sewn shut.
- Melanie tries to escape in one of the elevators, but the killer uses the cables as a makeshift noose to hang her.
- Nicole is bound to an operating table and gets her still-beating heart ripped out.
- Deadpan Snarker: Robert dishes out a lot of snark, typically towards Wade or Nicole.
- Dead Guy on Display: The killer strings up Adam's corpse for the rest of the group to find.
- Death by Woman Scorned: Wade dies after realizing that Kathy is really Kay Knight, a girl he bullied in high school for having a crush on him.
- Decoy Damsel: With all the other guests dead, Kathy is set up to be the Final Girl to Wade's Final Boy... only to reveal that she planned the whole thing. Wade is promptly murdered by her.
- Dies Wide Open: Adam, Nicole, and Wade die with their eyes still open.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Kathy's motivation for wanting revenge on Wade is because he made fun of her weight in high school, and laughed in her face when she admitted to having feelings for him.
- Downer Ending: Everyone except Kathy is dead, and she gets away with all of her crimes.
- Dumb Blonde: Melanie and Pamela both come off as airheaded and ditzy.
- The Ending Changes Everything: In a Cruel Twist Ending kind of way. Kathy reveals to Wade that she's the real mastermind behind everything, and that the Malevolent Masked Man that's been chasing them this whole time is really a proxy. She then kills Wade by slicing his throat.
- Foreshadowing:
- At the party in the beginning, Kathy takes a moment to observe Wade on stage. Her revenge plot has him at the center of it.
- Adam and Kathy both mention that Robert was only brought to the party because Nicole took him with her. Later on, it's revealed that Robert is the only guest that wasn't a target of Kathy's revenge plot, and is only in any danger because of Nicole bringing him. Fittingly, he is the only victim not to be killed by the murderer directly.
- When Wade accuses him of leaving Nicole to die, Robert asks him if he wants him to "bash [his] head against the wall" to prove his innocence. Robert is killed by Wade repeatedly bashing his head against the floor.
- When Wade tells Kathy that Robert is dead, she asks how he died. When Wade refuses to explain it in detail, she hugs him and says that she wouldn't have known what to do if he had been killed. This foreshadows that she'd been saving Wade for last to get her personal revenge on him, and that she wanted Robert to die.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Kathy King was once Kay Knight, a shy young woman who was bullied for her weight. After high school, she reinvented herself as a successful cooking show host while harboring a desire to get back at those who wronged her. Her lust for revenge turns her into a ruthless, psychopathic murderer.
- Gender-Equal Ensemble: At first, the group consists of four girls and three guys. Following the deaths of Adam, Melanie and Pamela, the remaining survivors are two guys and two girls.
- Genre Savvy: Late in the film, Robert is quick to realize that the killer deliberately separated Kathy from him and Wade so that they'd be helpless to save her. He also correctly points out that he and Wade are being played against each other. Sadly, his savviness doesn't save him.
- Heroic BSoD: Robert experiences one when he thinks Nicole has died. His manner is much more subdued, and he doesn't even want to help Wade look for a way to escape the room they're trapped in. It's not until they discover Kathy is alive that Robert returns to his usual self.
- A House Divided: Wade, Kathy and Nicole suspect Robert of helping the killer track them after realizing his name wasn't on the killer's list of victims. The latter two drop it after Robert finds a folder with his name on it, but Wade remains suspicious of him. This contributes to Robert's death.
- Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday: The story is set on New Year's Eve.
- Hysterical Woman: Nicole spends a lot of time panicking or crying. More than once, Robert has to snap her out of her hysterics.
- Impromptu Tracheotomy:
- Adam dies after being stabbed in the throat. We get a lovely shot of the blade piercing his flesh.
- Wade dies after his throat is slashed open, choking on his blood for a few moments before dying.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
- Robert can be kind of a dick, but he puts himself at risk to look out for the others once it becomes apparent they're in actual danger, such as trying to save Melanie in the booby-trapped elevator or putting himself behind everyone else in case of an ambush.
- Wade seems to genuinely care about Kathy, often looking out for her safety and telling her to escape without him if she can.
- Kiss Diss: Robert tries to get a kiss from another woman during the New Year's party, but she slaps him.
- Madness Mantra: Nicole repeats "It's just a dream, it's just a dream" to herself after finding Wade and Kathy's unconscious bodies and realizing she is the next on the list to die.
- Malevolent Masked Man: The killer wears all-black clothing and a nondescript black mask, never speaks, and almost seems to be able to predict what his victims will do at any given time. His clothes and mask get splattered with glow stick fluid after he chases down Nicole, adding to the creepiness.
- Malicious Misnaming: When the group arrives to the "VIP" party room, Adam sarcastically calls Robert "Bob".Robert: Nobody calls me Bob, asshole.
- Mr. Fanservice: At one point, Robert has a Shirtless Scene where he strips down to his boxers, showing off his fairly toned arms and chest.
- No Full Name Given: None of the partygoers (except for Kathy) have their last names given during the film or in the credits.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Lampshaded by Kathy, in an insulting sense. When Wade realizes he knows her from high school, she tells him that he probably doesn't remember her real name because he never bothered to use it. He only called her by her Embarrassing Nickname, "Lady Lard-Ass."
- Passive-Aggressive Kombat: Robert and Adam get into this.
- Refuse to Rescue the Disliked: Nicole is quite apathetic when Melanie starts screaming inside the elevator, having just called her a "fucking bitch" moments earlier for seemingly escaping without the others. She just stands there doing nothing while Robert and Wade try to get the doors open.
- Returning the Wedding Ring: Inverted. When Kathy finds the engagement ring Robert was going to give to Nicole, he tells her that he hopes the jeweler he bought the ring from will take it back.
- Screaming Woman: Nicole lets out a terrified shriek when she sees Melanie being strangled to death on the elevator cables.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Melanie flees to one of the elevators and tries to escape after a bucket of blood is spilled on her. It gets her killed.
- Significant Anagram: "Kathy King" is an anagram of "Kay Knight," her real name.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Robert is easily the most foul-mouthed of the group, and his dialogue makes liberal use of the Precision F-Strike.
- Shout-Out: A distressed blonde woman getting splashed with a bucket of blood? Sounds a lot like Carrie.
- Slashed Throat: Wade's death.
- Slasher Smile: Kathy gives one to the audience after killing Wade.
- Strapped to an Operating Table: Nicole is strapped to a table and murdered, with a ball gag in her mouth to muffle her screams. Her body is discovered later on by Wade and Kathy, still tied down.
- Symbolic Mutilation: Some of the insulting name cards the partygoers receive at the beginning hint at their fates.
- Adam receives the "pig" card. His corpse is strung up for the others to find, with a pig snout attached to his face.
- Pamela receives the "two-faced" card. She gets an ax to the center of her forehead, dividing her face into two halves.
- Nicole receives the "heartless" card. She gets her heart torn out of her chest.
- Ten Little Murder Victims: Or seven, in this case. Robert is suspected of helping the killer, but it turns out that it's Kathy, and Robert was only in danger because Nicole brought him with her to the party.
- Trailers Always Spoil: The DVD menu spoils Adam, Pamela, Nicole, and Wade's deaths.
- Uncomfortable Elevator Moment: Later on, the group is forced to enter the same elevator Melanie was killed in earlier, with her body still hanging inside of it. Everyone is visibly uncomfortable.Nicole: I forgot about her.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Adam and Melanie only get a handful of scenes before they're offed by the killer, and Pamela is killed in the first "game" not long afterwards. The bulk of the film focuses on Kathy, Wade, Nicole, and Robert.
- You Wake Up in a Room: In the last act, Robert and Wade are drugged and wake up in a locked room. Robert realizes that the killer trapped them there with no apparent means of escape so he could kill Kathy. The key was planted in Robert's jacket, and falls out after he shoves Wade. Wade, thinking he's working with the killer, kills Robert and takes the key.
- You're Insane!: Wade tells Kathy this when he learns her motives for hunting the group.Kathy: No kidding.
