Language - Japanese
Genre - slasher, Horror
As is often the case this may have a few spoilers
Nami is the host of a late night new T.V. show. A video tape is delivered to her. When she watches it she finds that most of the tape is a journey to an abandoned building but then things take a turn for the worst, the end of the tape is the torture and murder of a women followed by a picture of Nami. Determined to find out whether the murder was real, Nami and her news crew follow the route shown in the part of the tape which leads them to an old industrial building. The group split into three groups of two two’s and one to go and explore to see if they can find any evidence of the murder on the film. As the party travels through the building they are picked off one by one by a mysterious figure and the deadly traps he has set. Will any of the party remain alive long enough to find out why they were lured there.
In many ways ‘Evil Dead Trap’ is a standard 80’s slasher (it was made in 1988) and follows the standard slasher plot of; a group of people visit a place. Unknown to them there is murderer/slasher there and they are killed one at a time. The film also follows many of the standard slasher tropes, for instance the first kill takes places after a couple have sex, which is seen in many western slashers (the ‘friday 13th’ and ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ franchises are a good example of this)but , unlike the other slashers the new crew are not there to party and fornicate but to investigate a possible murder. This makes their initial decision to split into three groups a bit odd seeing as they already know that there may be a killer around.
The five main characters who form the film crew the news crew are:
Nami - the main character and film anchor
Lee & Rie - backstage crew
Makio - Photographer
Kondo - the only male on the crew who seems to be the ‘gofer’
With the exception of Nami it’s not really obvious what roles the rest of the crew play with the possible exception of Makio who is always running around photographing everything but the film needs victims or else it wouldn't be a slasher. Kondo seems to have the distinction of being included in the crew so we have a male and female for the (consensual) sex scene. Apart from that he seems to spend his time hiding in cupboards and being a bit of an arse, he also has the distinction of being the one kill we don’t see on screen(slight spoiler but if you’ve seen even one other slasher you’ll know he had it coming).
Apart from the news crew there are four other characters who appear at the building, these are:
an unnamed man who is looking for his brother, he seems to know his way around the building including a secret passage.
another unnamed man who likes to rape people and give (cryptic) information about the killer whilst doing so.
Hideki - for most of the film this is just a name we here. Possibly the first man’s brother
Hideki’s mother is also (kinda but not a Norman Bates Kinda) in the film.
It is a good guess that one of these is the killer and that one lured the crew to the building but the film does do a good job of keeping at least some of it’s secrets until the final confrontation.
Evil Dead Trap is a good little slasher and, even if you guess who is going to be the first to go you don’t guess how and when. Some of the deaths are gory and there are a couple of good jump moments as well as a couple of fake outs. Some of the effects are a bit dated but it stands up better than another film with a similar killer (whose title i will not name because it will be a massive spoiler). There are a couple of moments of ‘Hostel’ like torture and a couple of ‘Saw’ like traps but the film is definitely more slasher than anything else.
Evil Dead Trap has spawned two sequels, ‘Evil Dead Trap 2’, which I will review in a following entry and ‘The Brutal Insanity of Love’ which i can not find a copy of. If i ever do I will also review it.
No comments:
Post a Comment