Prime Time: The Mouse Trap (2024)

I've been around a bit. Which means I'm old, but also means that I have learned many lessons. Most of those lessons are visible in my online writing. I used to try and tag movie titles all over social media, whether the review was good or bad. Then I discovered that was a bad thing, particularly when the review is bad and the film-makers see it appearing in places they may not want to see it. I used to be a bit more free and easy with my insults, although I am pretty sure that I still did my best to avoid getting personal. And I used to live in a world in which many of the horror movies looking to make a quick payday seemed just a bit less cynical.

The Mouse Trap is another of those recent movies that is cashing in on an expired copyright (this particular one belonging to "Steamboat Willie"). It's written by Simon Phillips, an actor and writer involved in some very poor genre movies throughout the past two decades. It's directed by Jamie Bailey. The last thing I saw from this duo was Deinfluencer, a film so bad that it makes The Mouse Trap seem wonderful in comparison. And The Mouse Trap is decidedly not wonderful.

There's a wraparound that shows two detectives interviewing a young woman (Rebecca, played by Mackenzie Mills) who has just survived a massacre at an amusement arcade. The killer was wearing a very familiar mask, and may have the power of teleportation. This makes it much easier for him to carve his way through everyone who has turned up after hours to celebrate the birthday of Alex (Sophie McIntosh). Simple, eh. So you should expect a cheap film that keeps a focus on gratuitous violence, and maybe also some gratuitous nudity. That's not what you get though. 

There's an amusing opening scroll that allows the film-makers to acknowledge their cheek at (mis)using something simply based on the availability of it, but that's the only thing here that is worth your time. I don't want to be overly harsh on the cast members, despite nobody being all that good, so I'll just say that nobody manages to deliver a character with any depth, or worth caring about in the slightest. A large part of that is to do with the writing, of course, but Mills, McIntosh, Madeline Kelman, Ben Harris, Callum Sywyk, Mireille Gagné, James Laurin, and Kayleigh Styles are only being mentioned here because I can check the cast list online. I couldn't pick any of them out of a lineup if my life depended on it, and I only just finished watching the film.

I blame both Bailey and Phillips equally for this mess. At best, this could have been a silly bit of murder and mayhem. If there's no need for logic then there's no need to limit the creativity. Sadly, this is a tame and, worst of all, boring slasher movie that barely delivers enough bloodshed, let alone anything else that could have made it more entertaining. The 80-minute runtime feels much longer than that, and I guarantee that there are dozens of other cheap slasher movies that do a much better job without making use of some misappropriated iconography. 

Yes, I'll watch every other movie like this. I'm going to check out Screamboat, I'll eventually check out that second Winnie The Pooh horror, Popeye's Revenge, Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare, and Bambi: The Reckoning too. I doubt I'll enjoy many (if any) of them. But I can now hope that they're at least more fun than this dull dreck.  

2/10

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Deinfluencer (2022)

A British chiller that also wants to comment on our relationships with social media, the scariest thing about Deinfluencer is the fact that there’s at least one sequel being prepped (although we can always hope that it doesn’t get to the full production stage).

A young woman named Kelly (Marie Luciani-Grimaldi) wakes up in an unknown location, distressed to find that she has been kidnapped by someone who intends to set her a number of challenges. All of those challenges will revolve around her getting certain numbers of likes on her Instagram posts, and all will also aim to teach Kelly a valuable lesson.

Directed by Jamie Bailey, who also worked on the script with actor Simon Phillips (onscreen as the masked kidnapper), Deinfluencer is childishly simple and clumsy in the way it handles the central idea. It’s obvious that someone figured out the end point and decided to retrofit the whole thing from there, and it’s equally obvious that everyone involved would have to compensate for the budgetary limitations with talent and creativity. They aren’t able to do so.

I tend to like seeing Phillips onscreen, a jobbing actor who has been plying his trade for quite a while now, but he’s sadly not often a sign of quality. His acting range feels quite limited, and his reputation feels seriously tarnished by his immersion in the UK film productions that aim for a business model of “keep costs low and turn a profit selling titles before people realise how bad they are”. He has starred in an average of 4 movies a year for the past few years, and I am willing to bet that very few of those, if any, manage to rise up to the level of average. Luciani-Grimaldi isn’t very good here either, although she has the excuse of just being at the start of her onscreen acting career. There are one or two others bulking up the tiny cast, but nobody acquits themselves well enough to warrant a namecheck here.

Every time I see another film like this, one that feels as if it has come off some production line for British movies made without care or passion, I get mad. I get mad at the fact I know I will still watch the damn thing to the end, I get mad at those involved not making enough effort, and I get mad for the people who have been unable to get their own films made while dross like this ends up out there, littering the cinematic landscape like full dog “poo bags” hanging from tree branches.

Maybe everyone went into this with the best intentions. Maybe this is genuinely the best end result they could have achieved. I strongly doubt it though, and I suspect both Bailey and Phillips know they could have done better. But that might have taken a bit more effort.

2/10

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Prime Time: The Nights Before Christmas (2019)

I'll admit to becoming wary when I started watching The Nights Before Christmas. First of all, it seems to be one of those movies that features a lot of UK actors passing themselves off as American (although most of them do a good job, and there are a number of American actors also in the cast). Second, it's kind of a sequel to Once Upon A Time At Christmas, a film I have not seen. Thankfully, you can get up to speed easily enough, connecting the dots as one main character (Courtney, played here by Keegan Chambers) discusses the trauma of surviving a Santa-led killing spree.

The plot is enjoyably slight. A couple who view themselves as Santa (Simon Phillips) and Mrs. Claus (Sayla de Goede) escaped from a secure facility four years ago and are now killing off people they deem to be on the "naughty list". The FBI keeps being unable to catch them, despite the efforts of Agent Natalie Parker (Kate Schroder), Courtney suspects she will be a target again, and there's a young woman called Jennifer (Shannon Cotter) who should start worrying, because she is actually the daughter of Santa.

It seems that actor Simon Phillips has settled nicely into his role here, having been a guiding hand in the development of this character, and these films (it looks like there's at least one more on the way, according to IMDb). Fair play to him, he certainly has fun in the lead role, and delivers a decent helping of gore and nastiness alongside the complete lack of believability. This isn't a film to overthink and pick apart. It's one to sit back and just be amused by.

Director Paul Tanter does a decent job in the big chair. Everything looks good enough, and the audio quality (often a problem in these lower-budget horrors) is consistently well done, making the final product something that stands as a great example of how to use every dollar wisely. The practical effects are generally quite impressive, and even the score isn't too bad.

Few people are as good as Phillips when it comes to having a presence onscreen, but De Goede matches him. Her Mrs. Claus is quite the Harley Quinn-esque character (a touchstone so obvious that you will see it mentioned in every review ever written about this film), and she is a very worthy Bonnie to Phillips' Clyde. If Bonnie and Clyde had worn "Santa suits" and aimed for more grisly kills. Chambers and Cotter are both okay, and Schroder tries her best, but is hampered by the fact that her character is as ineffective as many other characters in the movie, when it comes to actually getting close to catching the killers in time.

Nothing to prioritise high on your viewing list, this is nevertheless a fun Christmas horror for those who enjoy such things. It's certainly preferable to many other attempts to wring money from Christmas horror fans that I have seen lately (reminder - avoid most movies with the word Krampus in the title, except for Krampus).

6/10

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Strippers Vs Werewolves (2012)

If you go to check out Strippers Vs Werewolves on IMDb (where it has an undeserved general rating of 3/10) then you will find that someone has added this little titbit to the trivia section - "Only took £38 at the British box office. This means only four people payed to see the film at the cinemas." I would urge you to ignore that fact for two reasons. The first is that Strippers Vs Werewolves isn't really a movie made for a cinema viewing (the fact that it had a limited release at all surprises me). The second is that, despite a number of flaws, this is a perfectly enjoyable comedy horror, with much more emphasis on the comedy than horror.

When one of her clients gets a bit carried away with himself and things get hairy, stripper Justice (Adele Silva) stabs at him with a silver pen and he dies. A death isn't good for business in any strip club so it's up to poor doorman Franklyn (Nick Nevern) to make the body unidentifiable and get rid of it, as ordered by club owner Jeanette (Sarah Douglas). Unfortunately for all involved, the dead man had some tough 'n' nasty gangster/werewolf mates (led by Ferris, played by Billy Murray) and when they realise that something is amiss they set out to find their friend. When they discover the corpse the only thing that matters to them is retribution. Can a bumch of strippers avoid becoming the main course for these furry fiends?

Okay, it's a dumb film, admittedly. Yet it's full of energy, has some genuine funny moments/lines and provides exactly what the title tells you. The strippers may, for the most part, be rather implausibly averse to nudity but you still get to enjoy the lovely Silva in skimpy attire, the gorgeous Barbara Nedeljakova, a few moments onscreen for Lucy Pinder, Ali Bastian, Coralie Rose, Rita Ramnani and Charlie Bond. Sarah Douglas was very good in her role and there's also a fleeting cameo in the last few minutes for Lysette Anthony. For the male portion of the cast you get the aforementioned Murray, the great Martin Compston, Simon Phillips in a very funny role and limited screentime for the likes of Alan Ford, Steven Berkoff, Martin Kemp and Robert Englund.

The script by Pat Higgins and Phillip Barron isn't too bad at all. It often throws in a few too many crude moments to keep our villains cloaked in their London hardman personas but it's also funny when it intends to be and has a nice couple of references to the greatest werewolf movie of all time AKA An American Werewolf In London (at one point a character considers a ragga version of "Bad Moon Risin'" and at another point we get the "you made me miss" line, albeit quite poorly delivered).

The direction from Jonathan Glendening keeps everything moving nicely. Some may find it overedited and too indulgent in places (with split-screen work and funky transitions) but I felt that every choice just added to the fun and energy of the thing. This is certainly a marked improvement over Glendening's last werewolf movie (the dire 13 Hrs) and I hope he continues to work with livelier material like this in the future.

You may think, from everything that I've written here, that this is a fantastic movie and pretty much unmissable. That's not the case, not by a long shot. What drags the film down? Well, the biggest problem with the movie, sadly, is the look of the werewolves - the first time I saw them I must admit that I laughed although the effects did grow on me as the film played on. The other main problem with the movie is that a lot of the humour is silly. Silly can be enjoyable enough, which is why I ended up liking the film anyway, but it's never as good as smart humour, in my opinion.

Having said that, few other films feature a finale that has a number of strippers dressed in Red Riding Hood attire set to do battle with a bunch of gangster werewolves. In that respect, I'll take this over any rubbish Catherine Hardwicke film any day of the week.

6/10