Trapped is the kind of movie that makes the whole "watching a horror movie every day" thing worth it. There is just no chance that I would have ever watched this thing otherwise. The story sounds pretty bland - three escaped convicts kidnap two young women and end up trapped (naturally) in a mine shaft with an unspeakable evil - the box art is unattractive, and I've never heard it mentioned on any other website or anything. And while it's far from "good" in the traditional sense, I'll be damned if I didn't have a really good time with it. I'm pretty sure that a lot of it has to do with the fact that it seems to be targeted right at my personal nostalgic bad-movie sweet spot. Despite a release date of 1993, it was actually filmed in 1988. And it's got 80's cheese written all over it. Over the top villains, bad (yet very watchable) acting, a great/terrible synth score, and Cameron Mitchell - it's almost like Trapped was made especially for me.
So while it'd be hard to recommend it to everyone (or even most people), I feel like it's a bit of a shame that Trapped isn't at least a little more well known. I mean, it's certainly a bad movie, but a lot of bad movies at least have followings, you know?
It starts off with a prison break somewhere cold and snowy. I'm not sure if it's ever mentioned where Trapped takes place, but it was filmed entirely in Eagle River, Wisconsin. Two nasty convicts (major asshole/leader Face and his big dumb cohort Mongo) force a third guy with a heart of gold ("Hot Rod" Randy) to help them break out of prison. They make a (kind of easy, actually) escape and wander through the snow for a while. Meanwhile, final girl Robin and her friend Monica are headed out to a big party - they almost bail out because the weather is so bad, but decide to forge ahead. Unfortunately, they run across the escapees, who kidnap them and take their car to help them evade the law. Double unfortunately, the five of them run across an abandoned mine, and their car falls in. Triple unfortunately, there is an unspeakable evil hanging out down there. So not only do they have to try and get out of the mine, they also have to deal with a cop who eventually finds them down there. And don't forget an unspeakable evil. (And honestly, I was hoping for Giant Spider or something, but it ends up being a little more tame.)
But just to be clear, the jail break dudes (save Randy) are bad news. Both Face and Mongo are evil guys - they constantly threaten to kill and/or rape Monica and Robin, and seem to take joy in harassing them. They are your typical one-dimensional scumbags, who are just evil for the sake of being evil. So it's kind of a motley crew: Two really bad guys, one bad guy with a heart of gold, two innocent women, a cop... all up against *something* down there in the mine. So while the script never really does anything terrifically interesting with it, at least it's kind of a unique set up.
And, Cameron Mitchell is in it as Robin's dad. He's not really in it all that much and doesn't do anything noteworthy, but still. I love that guy.
Trapped just has that certain je ne sais quoi that I really dug. Everything is just so heavy handed - the bad guys are *really* bad, Robin (obvious Final Girl) is *really* kind and good hearted, and the weird woman who lives by the mine is *really* weird. She gets a long, emotional, and very strange monologue towards the end that is worth the price of admission alone. There are no shades of gray in this film - what you see is what you get. And what you see is generally pretty entertaining.
What you hear is a different story. For some strange reason, there is this weird reverb thing going on for much of the film. I haven't found any mention of it in the other reviews I could find... there were only eight, one of which was just the word "bad." I thought maybe it was just my feed off of Amazon Prime or something - but it was only the background noises, not the dialogue. So I can only conclude that the director Leszek Burzynski was all like "hey - there are echoes in caves - so we should have echoes!" It's pretty irksome at times - I mean, it's incompetent enough to be sort of charming, and ultimately it's not that big of a deal. But it's totally one of those things that once you notice, you can't unnotice, you know?
Sound issues aside, it's not a really poorly put together film or anything. True, the picture on the Amazon feed was not great (I assume it was ripped from a VHS or something), but things are generally well shot and you can usually see what is going on (not always a given in a cave/mine movie). There is enough competence behind the camera to let you focus on the the onscreen weirdness, which is where Trapped really shines.
The horror-gore is nothing special. There is at least some effort put into it, which I appreciated. But the price you pay for being a "so-bad-it's-good" type film is that there isn't really a lot of actual tension. The big bad is actually kind of a disappointment but at least the ride getting there is worth it.
Oh, and I have to mention the score. Once you hear the ultra-synthy vibe, you kind of know you're in for something special. It's mostly just a one keyboard/atmospheric kind of deal - but it's one of the cheesiest ones I've come across. The music is so upfront and obnoxious that it sometimes obscures the action - you're paying more attention to the droning one note tune than you are to whatever is happening on screen. And sometimes it's almost as if the soundtrack guy just wanted to wail away on the highest keys possible. I actually watched this with headphones on, but I could imagine my dog getting upset if this was on external speakers. But again, in a weird way this sort of helps build up Trapped and its bizarre charm.
So don't get me wrong. I realize it kind of sounds like I'm raving about Trapped - but I don't mean to. It is *not* a good movie. But every once in a while you come across a bad movie that just works for you, you know? The whole film is just kind of funny, but it's also very earnest. It's certainly not for everyone - but it's got the whole nostalgic thing working in its favor. The thing is, Trapped is maybe a little too boring to have worked for me when I was actually a pre-teen. But from my mid-thirties it seems like the kind of film that I would have *wanted* to work for me as a teenager. Does that make any sense?
I would not even know what to say if someone asked me about this film.
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