Horror Movie Review: The Mouse Trap (2024)

This is going to get really old quickly, isn’t it?

I am, of course, talking about the glut of classic child friendly content that is slowly entering the public domain and seeing creators turn them into horror films. Which isn’t a bad idea, until everyone with a few hundred quid/dollars and a camera decides to jump on the bandwagon. All because of the wild success of Winnie the Pooh: Blood & Honey and its equally successful sequel.

Everyone wants a piece of that pie, even as it slowly decays and turns to mush.

On January 1, 2024, Steamboat Willie, the first animated work to star Mickey Mouse, entered the public domain in the US and Canada. A lapse in copyright that has resulted in The Mouse Trap, a careful attempt to use the Mickey Mouse character without referencing it, outside of the Steamboat Willie side of things. If you’re thinking that sounds quite awkward, you are correct. In fact, The Mouse Trap tries so hard to avoid being connected to Disney, it stops coming across like a horror parody at all.

Which, once that’s gone, means all we’re left with is a sub-standard slasher with terrible characters, questionable acting, and poor attempts at humour. This isn’t a good film, and the clues are there from the start. Directed by Jamie Bailey and written by Simon Phillips, the film begins with a Star Wars style text crawl that overstates how its not in anyway related to Disney. This is done in amusing fashion, at first, and then it just keeps going on, and on, and on.

Finally, when that’s all said and done, we immediately crash cut to a pair of detectives interviewing a woman named Rebecca (Mackenzie Mills). She the lone survivor of a recent massacre at an amusement arcade, and they think she had something to do with it. So, it’s story time as she slowly reveals to them the truth of what happened. Which, as a story-telling trope would be fine except we keep cutting back to the cell and the officers, who constantly pick holes in her story, and in doing so, the plot. It’s infuriating and destroys any possible immersion. All so it can sequel bait at the end.

So, the tale she tells them is one as old as time. She, and a group of friends threw a birthday party at an amusement arcade where a Mickey Mouse mask (sorry, not Mickey Mouse) possess the owner, transforming him into some sort of supernatural being, and sends hm on a stabbing rampage. Why? How? It doesn’t matter and it quickly becomes apparent that beyond the Steamboat Willie connection, the film has nothing to offer. Unless you count unnatural character interactions, stupid underreactions, disappointing kills (outside of the final one), and villain that is unmemorable.

I get it, you can’t parody Mickey Mouse too much as Disney will come down on the film like a ton of bricks, but even The New York Ripper got away with a Donald Duck voice. Are you seriously telling me we couldn’t have got a joke version of Mickey’s voice instead of what we actually get here?

All this ends up doing is making the villain feel so ordinary. Just a dude in a mask, and not a good mask, who can teleport. I don’t get, but I’m sure the inevitable sequel will fill in those blanks, right?

The Mouse Trap just isn’t a good film. Take away the Mickey thing, which is unremarkable anyway, and all we’re left with is a bad slasher film. Enjoy.