Chris Flackett
What happens to people when they are forced to be locked down, unable to leave their homes, forced to live their lives with limited resources and only four walls to explore? Do they go stir crazy or do they adapt and adjust? No, I’m not talking about Covid lockdowns, but Trapped Inn, the latest film from writer and director Leah Sturgis.
The set-up is basic but effective. An American cycling team, led by the personable Coach (Brian Gross), are training in a mountainous region of France when, after an accident, the injured and arrogant team captain Greg (Robert Palmer Watkins) is taken back to their lodge by Coah and rival team member Connor (Matt Rife) while the rest of the team carries on. Pretty soon, the rest of the team, the chalet owners and the other guests disappear, whilst TV news reports indicate a worldwide virus is infecting the the population and that people are to avoid leaving their homes. Coach, Connor, Greg and Greg’s girlfriend Andrea (Brielle Gearson) are left to fend for themselves, with unforeseen consequences….
It’s a good idea for a film, and with the first months of the Covid pandemic still fresh within memory, there’s plenty of scope for tension, conflict and scares as they get under each other’s skins whilst locked up in such close quarters. But there lies the problem with Trapped Inn: there’s plenty of tension, and it tries to offer scares, but those scares are far and few between and for good reason—Trapped Inn doesn’t quite know what kind of film it wants to be.
Throughout the film, moments of horror, sci-fi, melodrama and romance all take their turns at playing out on the screen, but these genre elements never cohere into a whole, nor does any one element ever really dominate over the others, meaning the film seems to veer and lurch from one genre to another, often clumsily so, in a way that takes the viewer out of the film. In its way, Trapped Inn fails to achieve what something like Emilia Perez is successful at: combining all of its disparate elements (in the case of Emilia Perez, there’s the musical, the crime film and operatic melodrama) into a balanced, coherent whole so that you recognise the different parts of the film as parts of a bigger whole, rather than elements of different genres battling for supremacy and therefore diluting the whole.
The horror, when it comes, is effective, and in the case of a particular visual embodiment of the virus, is endearingly creepy. Likewise, Brian Gross as Coach demonstrates the descent from the strong, fair boss to a paranoid, deluded danger to himself and others with panache, our unease matching that of his housemates as they begin to realise how far from reality Coach is beginning to travel.
The lockdown section of the film is possibly the strongest part of it all; the fraying tempers being barely restrained and the subtle looks to each other, the activities such as the endless cleaning and attempting sleep just so as to have something to do, to give the day the illusion of structure and meaning—all of this yields moments of interesting conflict and surprising moments of joy when the household (briefly) comes together. There’s real heart to this section, and it makes me wish that Trapped Inn followed this style more closely and explored the tensions and mindset of people in a lockdown situation more deeply.
As the film reached its climax with a nicely romantic and tender moment, I was prepared to forgive some of the issues I’d encountered earlier. But then a strange twist regarding the nature of the origin of the virus undid the goodwill I was feeling with its awkward, nonsensical meaning and application. I’ll admit I didn’t see it coming, but then not every surprise is a good one. It would have been a braver ending to let things stand without the surprise ending that no one wanted.
I unfortunately can’t recommend Trapped Inn, as much as I want to (I was rooting for it!), but I will say that there was enough potential there that I would certainly watch whatever Leah Sturgis does next.
Trapped Inn is available to stream now.
