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Trap House (2023)

Trap House (2023)

4.2

A drug den thriller that's predictable and uninventive

Movie

English
Crime, Horror, Thriller, TV Movie
2023

TLDR

Is a “trap house horror” an original idea? Yes, but that's about the only thing this movie has going for it.

What it's about

A detective goes undercover to infiltrate a drug den, but he soon finds himself in over his head.

The take

After his brother's gruesome death at the infamous drug den, Trap House, Detective Grant Pierce is removed from the case to find its creator. He goes rogue and recruits a teenage drug dealer working for the Trap House with a plan to infiltrate. Whatever the film lacks in intrigue is not compensated by good writing or interesting traps/scares/twists that would befit its horror categorization. Even expectations to match its counterparts in the escape room genre are quickly lowered thanks to uninventive traps and shallow characters whose deaths weigh nothing in the grand scheme of the plot. The potential of a trap house horror/thriller to comment on addiction, race, poverty, or anything substantial outside of "crackheads are crazy" is ultimately wasted. Instead, there's stilted dialogue, caricatures of drug addicts, and a narrative that is hard to sit through, much less enjoy. 

 

What stands out

What Trap House manages to get right is its pacing. No scenes linger unnecessarily and it steadily moves the plot along. The traps and violent confrontations in the last act do enough to wrap up the film even though its happy-go-lucky ending is unsatisfyingly abrupt.

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