The Mouse Trap
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| The Mouse Trap | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 "I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I've ever known."
— Walt Disney
— This movie | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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"The worst film I've ever seen..and I've seen many recently. Appalling acting and shocking direction. Hard to categorise, neither a horror or comedy. Plot Man in Mickey Mouse mask slaughters annoying teens who I don't give a Donald Duck about in an arcade... It makes The Winnie the Poo catastrophe look like Friday the 13th. If you like watching drawn out shots of kids play air hockey or arcade games, then this is for you. Surely there are better directors, screenwriters and actors out there. Surprised by Simon Phillips, his resume, even though not perfect has some above average performances."
— darrenleerose-39520 on IMDB
The Mouse Trap (also known as Mickey's Mouse Trap) is a 2024 Canadian horror film directed by Jamie Bailey and written by Simon Phillips. It is a horror reimagining of Walt Disney's 1928 animated short film Steamboat Willie. While The Walt Disney Company retains exclusive rights to the depictions of the character from their franchise, Mickey's Steamboat Willie version went into the public domain on January 1, 2024, the same day the film was announced. It was released on August 6, 2024 to little fanfare and even worse reviews.
Plot
The plot can be summed up as: A masked killer dressed as Mickey Mouse kills a bunch of idiots at an arcade.
Why It's A 🎵B-A-D F-I-L-M!🎵
- Much like The Banana Splits Movie, The Mean One, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, and Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey II (which ironically came out in the same year of The Mouse Trap), the idea of a Mickey Mouse horror film was an abysmal one. By the time this film came out, the concept of a beloved childhood icon turning into a murderer became heavily discredited to the point where audiences actively rooted for Disney to extend the copyright protection for their characters.
- While there were parodical depictions of Mickey being a jerkass like in South Park, it was not to the degree here.
- It should be noticed that this film was only made as an attempt to cash-in on Steamboat Willie entering the public domain as a way to mock and make fun of Mickey Mouse, which is noteworthy since Mickey as a character has been mocked by numerous people several times and is universally disliked by the animation and film communities for being the mascot of Disney (a company that has become infamous in recent years for their terrible business decisions and poor workplace) that could be contributed to the infamous period of the Hays Code era of cinema where Mickey was severely downplayed in comparison to Donald Duck and Goofy (Dog), though he still did have a personality during the mid-to-late 1930's in shorts like Brave Little Tailor, Mickey's Rival, The Band Concert and Thru the Mirror. So to put it in perspective, this film is pretty much just a mockery of the character of Mickey Mouse for being a boring goody two shoes with zero personality and while this is the case in shows like Clubhouse, The Mickey Mouse Club and Funhouse (despite being decent shows), Mickey has more depth as a character than to what this movie portrays him as and it's clear that the makers behind this film didn't even watch any of the other Golden Age shorts to get a better glimpse of what Mickey Mouse is as a whole and only watched Steamboat Willie and believed in the misconception that he's a bland character with zero personality, which explains why this film is the way it is.
- In fact, it doesn't do the "Mickey Mouse horror film" well. The film, like with the first Blood and Honey film, is a generic slasher in which a killer kills a bunch of forgettable characters.
- Bad First Impression: The film opens with, and we kid you not, a Star Wars opening scroll parody in which the film begs the viewer to laugh at it because this film was made without affiliation from Disney but the producers still insist on enjoying Disney content. As one user on Letterboxd puts it: "If your movie opens with a Star Wars scroll parody, I can't take you seriously as a movie.", and the text scroll itself suffers from poor grammar and often pointlessly repeats itself at the end for no reason, making this part of the film very skippable.
- The cinematography is quite poor, since most of the film takes place in an arcade and there's rarely any variety in locations or sets with the only two other locations in the film being the prison that Rebecca was sent to, and one random bar, and even then, there are only three locations in the entire film and both of them look very plain and boring with an overuse of blue and red colors that look distracting and get tiring to look at for a while. Not to mention that most of the film takes place inside all the time with only one scene being outside, which makes the setting feel very lacking for a horror film and overall makes the film not work for a horror film since most horror films do occasionally take place in various locations and even the bad ones like Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood & Honey took place in various locations, something that this film is lacking overall.
- Poorly-written characters with no development or unique personality, with many of them being very cliche and unoriginal with only one personality trait:
- Alex is rather one-dimensional as a character, and has nothing relatable or unique about her character other than being the cliche "pretty girl" stereotype and immediately gets killed at the end of the film in an anti-climatic way.
- Rebecca suffers from being rather unlikeable and selfish, since she acts rude to the detectives and the other characters in the film, and she is revealed to be the only survivor of the incident at the beginning of the film, which makes her the worst character in the film.
- The male characters are nothing but stereotypes and have zero personality at all, making them very flat and overall bland in general. Ryan is the biggest example of this, he is extremely unlikeable and tends to get annoying quickly.
- The other female protagonists suffer from zero character development and are extremely lacking in depth overall.
- As mentioned in the previous part, the characters are so forgettable that viewers would often forget their names unless it has been pointed out to you. They can be described as a "bunch of idiots".
- Also mentioned in the previous part, the characters also make stupid decisions, like leaving the group just to have sex. At least when compared to Blood and Honey, these characters at least try to outsmart the villain.
- The acting ranges from passable to about as stiff as Mickey peeling potatoes, since many of the performances suffer from being incredibly wooden and have zero energy at all as many of the characters either over-act their performances or have terrible line delivery due to the terrible dialogue and weak script. The worst example is the actor playing Mickey Mouse, as he sounds nothing like the iconic rodent and instead sounds more like a poor man's imitation of the Grim Reaper, which is another example of the film being a mockery of the Mickey Mouse universe and portraying Mickey in the worst light possible.
- The film is infamous for depicting Mickey Mouse as a mass serial killer, which received tons of backlash from fans for not only ruining the character for a cheap buck but also as a way to cash-in on Steamboat Willie entering the public domain, and the way how Mickey is portrayed in this film is just horrible as he is a complete monster with no redeeming qualities as he has no reason to murder any of the victims and now has a magical ability to teleport (which isn't something that he could do in any of his classic cartoons or the TV shows like the 2013 reboot or Mickey Mouse Works) to prevent himself from being defeated, and for whatever reason as a dumb plot-device, he has a fear of flashlights for no reason as it was never established that Mickey had a fever of flashlights since he was shown using one in Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, which makes this plot point pointless and contrived. At least when it came to Blood and Honey, Pooh and Piglet kill in retaliation for Christopher Robin leaving them. This could be an attempt to make the villain more scary when we don't know the motivation like with Michael Myers, but here it's insulting. This is especially horrible since Mickey would never be this cruel to anyone and even when he was like that, it was because he got frustrated by their actions or they were bullying him (like in the classic cartoons like The Band Concert and Mickey's Rival where Donald and Mortimer were annoying Mickey and caused him to get angry at them), which makes this portrayal of Mickey disrespectful to his creator Walt Disney, who made Mickey Mouse after he lost the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit from Universal from a contract dispute, which shows how egotistical the creators behind this movie really are.
- This negative portrayal of Mickey Mouse was also likely done just to mock the character and Disney themselves for their awful business decisions, which wouldn't be so bad if for the fact that Mickey has already been mocked by millions of people for being a corporate mascot of a company that has become infamous in recent years, and it's been overdone to death as Mickey hasn't done anything wrong and this film is easily the worst example of Anti-Mickey Mouse humor since the film portrays the lovable mouse as a mass serial killer with no redeeming qualities, something that no other Anti-Mickey project would never do at all, making this film an insult to the character and just makes him more of a laughing stock to mainstream audiences overall.
- The costume design for Mickey Mouse is just awful, as he doesn't even look that scary and even if he's meant to resemble the Steamboat Willie version of himself, he looks more like 1930s Mickey more than anything. In fact, he looks more like a man dressed up as Mickey Mouse more than anything and apparently that is actually the case in the film, which is another reason why this film doesn't work as a "horror" film overall.
- The film features shameless product placement from Twister, Namco, Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Kerplunk and SpongeBob SquarePants.
- Half of the film mostly consists of boring and tedious interviews between the detectives and Rebecca that are not only a chore to watch, but they also serve no purpose other than to spill out exposition about scenes that later happen in the film that become way too obvious to predict the scenario happening during the moment in the scene it takes place, which ruins nearly everything about the film and results in this movie being a literal flashback about how a couple of teenage arcade workers got murdered in an arcade by a serial killer dressed as Mickey Mouse, since these scenes clearly spoil the entire film and could almost be removed from the film entirely since they're mostly filler and had no reason to be in the film to begin with, resulting them to be major pace-breakers for the entire film as a whole.
- Plot-Hole: It is never explained who the man behind the Mickey Mouse costume is, since not only is his face never revealed entirely, but we also never get any backstory as to why the killer wants to kill the victims in the Arcade or any motive for him to do so, and no other character in the film could possibly be the man behind the mask, and it is never hinted who could be the one behind the disguise in the first place and the voice of the killer is done by Simon Phillips, which could indicate that the man behind the disguise is an unknown person seeking revenge from the manager for unspecified reasons, making this plot element rather confusing overall, even for a horror film.
- One of the biggest problems with this film is that it fails as a "horror" movie, since most of the kills are extremely either extremely lame, executed poorly or are shown off-screen for no reason. In fact, nearly all of the most important elements of a horror film are watered-down in this film and whenever the film tries to get dark, it lacks any tension or thrill that makes a horror film so scary and terrifying in a good way, whereas this film isn't even that scary or frightening in the slightest and it relies way too much on shock value and cheap scares to try frightening the audience this film is intended for, which it fails at since films like Friday the 13th and Halloween understood what made a good slasher film and used the kill count very effectively when compared to this film and it's poor usage of kills. In fact, the film itself rarely feels like a horror film at all and instead more of a thriller film with slasher elements, and to think that this film is supposed to be a parody of Steamboat Willie is a massive insult to Disney and their impact upon animation as a whole, since Mickey Mouse is the mascot of the company and is considered by many to be an animation icon since he was the one who kickstarted animation into popularity and helped Disney become the household name it is today, thus making this film an insult to the Mickey Mouse franchise.
- Awful special effects and editing skills, as they mostly look very fake and are done so poorly that some of them are very noticeable as zero effort went into the production values of the film, since some of the effects look unfinished and the camerawork looks rather amateurish at best likely due to the poor direction from Jamie Bailey, and considering that the film was made on an extremely small budget and was only in production for a few months, it's clearly obvious that this film was rushed with a lack of effort put into the production values and it shows.
- Speaking of Disney, after the first thirteen minutes, the word "Mickey" or "Disney" is never brought up or referenced again. Once again, turning Mickey Mouse, whoever he is in this film, into a generic slasher villain.
- Awful pacing: Nothing significant happens for the first 30 minutes of the movie, which is nearly half of this film.
- Abrupt ending: Mickey Mouse decapitates a girl's head off and leaves her body there without killing three other characters along with her. There's also a mid-credits tease in which one other character is in league with Mickey Mouse.
- Overall, this film is nothing but a cash-grab and a complete disgrace to the Mickey Mouse franchise due to the lack of effort put into it and the film only existing just to mock the character of Mickey Mouse as an attempt to ride off the success of Winnie the Pooh: Blood & Honey and as a way to piggyback off Steamboat Willie entering the public domain, which shows that both Jamie Bailey and Simon Phillips only wanted to make fun of Mickey Mouse and made him into a mass serial killer just as a way for them to label as a corporate mascot and it shows.
"Hot Dog!" Qualities
- In this film's fairness, the characters do at least try to make better decisions than the characters in Blood and Honey, though that isn't really saying much.
- Some of the acting is passable for a low-budget movie.
Reception
The Mouse Trap received enormously negative reviews for its concept, horror, acting, and production value. It currently has a rating of 2.5 on IMDB ranking it, lower than Blood and Honey.
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