Crew
Director/Photography – Jamie Bailey, Screenplay – Simon Phillips, Producers – Jamie Bailey, Mem Ferda & Simon Phillips, Music – Darren Morze, Makeup Effects – Alexandra Menard. Production Company – MMT Ltd/Into Frame Films Ltd.
Cast
Simon Phillips (Mickey/Tom Collins), Sophie McIntosh (Alex Fen), Mackenzie Mills (Rebecca), Madeline Kalman (Jayna), Ben Harris (Ryan), Callum Sywyk (Marcus), Mireille Gagne (Gemma), Damir Kovic (Detective Cole), Nick Biskupek (Detective Marsh), James Lauin (Paul), Kayleigh Styles (Jackie), Jesse Nasmith (Danny), Allegra Nocita (Marie)
Plot
Rebecca has been thrown in a jail cell where she is questioned by two detectives about the massacre that occurred at the Fun Haven amusement arcade. She recounts how employees Alex Fen and Jayna were asked to work a late shift. Their boss Tom Collins was drinking in his office while watching a film of Steamboat Willie featuring his favourite character Mickey Mouse when he spilled alcohol on the power cable. This caused the projector to flicker and affect a Mickey Mouse mask in a display case. Alex then found that her friends had used the late shift as an opportunity to throw a surprise early birthday party for her. As they began partying, a malevolent figure in the Mickey Mouse mask appeared and began slaughtering them.
On January 1, 2024, the first Mickey Mouse cartoon Steamboat Willie (1929) came out of copyright and into public domain in the USA. As happened with Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood & Honey (2023) when the Winnie-the-Pooh characters came into public domain, this saw a host of filmmakers immediately descend and offer a series of Mickey Mouse horrors. These have so far included I Heart Willie (2024), Mouse of Horrors (2025), Mouseboat Massacre (2025) and Screamboat (2025).
Essentially, The Mouse Trap has been made cheaply around the availability of a location – the Funhaven Arcade in Ottawa, Canada – where the Mickey Mouse-masked killer pursues a bunch of teen/twentysomethings around the arcade killing them. In all other respects it is effectively a Mickey Mouse Slasher Film. Certainly, it is a little better cast, photographed and edited together than some of these other public domain horrors look.
On the other hand, the script has a complete randomness to it. There’s the means whereby the killer Mickey Mouse is created – arcade manager (Simon Phillips) is watching Steamboat Willie in his office when his drink spills on the projector cable creating a short that somehow affects a Mickey mask in a glass cabinet. Both the character of the manager and the killer Mickey are played by Phillips, although it is not clear if he is possessed or how we go from the mask being affected by an electrical short to someone being a murderous killer. The killer Mickey for random reasons also gets an ability to teleport around the arcade. For equally random reasons, the group find that Mickey has a vulnerability to a strobing light when one of the girls hits strobe mode on her flashlight by accident – I can only assume this is maybe something to do with Steamboat Willie’s being projected at silent movie frame rates leading to a flickering frame look; there is certainly no rationale provided in the film.
There are definitely times that The Mouse Trap doesn’t seem to be taking itself seriously, particularly when it comes to the opening credit scrawl, which goes on for some length with tongue-in-cheek talk about making sure that this is not associated with the Disney copyright and then doubling over to make sure that they are not infringing on the copyright for the Star Wars-styled space crawl credits either. There is the odd amusing line – “Haven’t you seen any horror films ever?” one of the group compares their situation, “No, I have a sex life” – but otherwise the rest of the film takes itself seriously.
Canadian director/producer Jamie Bailey and British producer/actor sometimes director Simon Phillips previously collaborated on the anti-Trump dystopia This Was America (2020) and the horror films Deinfluencer (2022) and What Lurks Beneath (2024). Phillips on his own also directed the SF film The Last Scout (2007), the deathdream film The Last Seven (2011), and produced the horror films Strippers vs Werewolves (2012), Mad World (2018), The Night Before Christmas (2019) and Silent Bite (2024).
Trailer here