Happy Christmas one and all! So, obviously, the Lee Moon-young written and directed The Human Trap (also known as The Trap) might not be the obvious festive horror, and that is for the reason it isn't one, but was scheduled in for this special day regardless. Tangentially it takes place at least in snowy weather! Onward to the horror and mayhem...
A teenager is invited to go on a camping trip with his best friend from school, but rather than go alone, he decides to bring with him a girl he had been on a first date with, as well as another female friend intended to hook up with the best friend. They are led to the remote camping spot by a Christian doctor, with the specifics of the arrangement not immediately apparent. With the doctor needing to go to church, he leaves the four teens together up on the mountain site, warning them not to stray too far from camp due to the amount of hunting traps set up in the area. Unknown to the four, it appears the doctor might have shady ulterior reasons for the trip, he is working hand in hand with an inept hunter, who himself is currently pursuing a wild homeless man in the same area.
The set-up almost felt rushed to this one, but it makes a lot of sense later on as the eventual drip feed of story explains a lot of the initial lingering questions. After brief introductions the four are led to the camping spot by the obviously crooked doctor character. It is established very early on his links to the man hunter, with it clear he is lying to the group, so it appears that they have been lured to the area to be hunted for sport. What seems like a fairly simple story is given layers with at least some of the core protagonists hiding their own potentially deadly secrets from the others. I apologise that I didn't get the characters names, but with the four characters you have different personalities. The friend who arranged the trip is the more serious of the two boys, with a sick mother at home he has cause to be more morose. The friend who invited the girls is the more care-free one, shown to only really be looking out for himself. His date is immediately shown to be the more suspicious of the group, off on her own a lot, and gathering various types of weapons almost right away, and then there is the fourth girl, an airhead kleptomaniac. These four characters worked together well, with all kinds of infighting between them.
The antagonist characters had less screen time than you would expect, the doctor disappearing for much of the film right near the beginning, with the hunter off in the background for large portions of the runtime.
The meat of the plot takes a while to get going, but I enjoyed this build up due to the divergent path the film's story went in. There are eventual revelations that were fun to discover. I liked how key scenes from earlier in the movie are re-shown from the perspective of others, mainly by showing you two sides of a phone call, where earlier in the film the viewer is only shown one side of it, and by key events seeming to be caused by one character, but later being shown to actually be caused by someone else entirely. It leads up to a very bloody and bleak final third, with all characters getting covered in the crimson stuff as they battle to survive against their aggressors. This was comedic to a point, the humour is quite dark and supplemented the horror rather than be the main focus. By the time the end credits rolled, this humour had been swallowed up by the serious goings on. I will say, it was novel to have antagonists be quite this inept, much of the humour eventually comes from how badly prepared the antagonistic duo were.
The Human Trap didn't veer into torture porn territory as much as I had thought it would. That is no complaint at all, I liked the unexpected twists and turns, with this being more of a thriller than anything else. It leads to a satisfying conclusion with some decent special effects and a perhaps slightly open ended finish. The Human Trap will debut on Amazon Prime and other VOD/Streaming platforms on January 12th 2024 from Cinephobia Releasing.
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