Animal Trap review

By Mark Young

If someone comes to you and says that he has directed a found-footage horror that deals in psychological regression and that said film redefines ‘shoestring’ with a budget of $27, why wouldn’t you want to watch it? Of course, it’s not quite as straightforward as it seems, because this is titled ‘Animal Trap’ at least according to the link we were sent. Throw in that it is supposed to adhere to DOGME 95 principles and suddenly it becomes something a little bit different.

From my perspective, I’m not going to hold this to account against DOGME, that movement doesn’t mean anything to me as a film goer and I would rather review this from a ‘would I recommend it to anyone else?’ as opposed to ticking the list off. If you want to do that, that is also cool. 

We start in the room, the girl is in there, its bathed in a green filter and the soundtrack that accompanies has industrial black metal fighting against a more traditional ‘horror’ soundtrack. Visually, very little happens other than the unnamed woman reacting against things in the room which appear to cause harm, but this is never explained. The reasons why are never made clear; nor is her appearance as a modern day Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz (complete with red shoes). It is just her, slowly going insane on screen. The soundtrack to this plays a massive part in putting you on edge. There are echoes of past films within it with the combination of rapid whispers and that industrial white noise giving you an example of the mind pain she is experiencing. 

This is not an easy film to watch. Even if Director Mikey Okonkwo had filmed this without the DOGME 95 aspect, there’s no getting away from that budget. There is a section that comes in around 30 minutes in, where the screen is upside down with blurred images playing. They slowly come in to focus, but their voices remain slow and distorted. Again, it’s not explained what significance it has and you have no real indication of it being real anyway. I didn’t get a sense that the character had regressed, it felt that this had already taken place. In any case, it leaves you with more questions than answers, one of them being that this is time I won’t get back. Could I recommend it? Well it will appeal to a certain few, it should definitely appeal to those who love to champion micro-budget films but personally I have no interest in watching this again.