Around CinemaBlend, I am generally considered the resident Disney expert. I’ve seen every Disney animated movie, I do a lot of our coverage on Disneyland and Walt Disney World, and when I’m writing about TV or movies, I’m more likely to cover stories about Disney simply because I already know a great deal about the studio. I’ve studied Disney history extensively and have a shelf full of books on the topic. I know a bit about Mickey Mouse.
Last year, when Disney’s copyright on Steamboat Willie expired and the original Mickey Mouse short became part of the public domain, it wasn’t exactly a shock to see it flipped into a cheap horror movie almost instantly. The same thing happened to Winnie the Pooh when his first book became public domain. The Mouse Trap, as the movie is called, recently became available with a Peacock subscription. So as the resident Mickey Mouse expert, I felt it was my duty to see what was going on. While I didn’t expect to like it, and I didn’t, the reason why was a bit more surprising.
The Mouse Trap Is Terrible, But That’s Not A Surprise
Let’s get the important stuff out of the way first. The Mouse Trap is a bad movie. It’s a really bad movie. The sets are cheap, the dialogue is wooden the script is an absolute mess, and the plot is borderline incoherent. Everything about the movie screams “cheap cash in” but not in a fun way.
The movie opens with a disclaimer making it clear that Disney did not endorse the movie in any way. To be clear, Mickey Mouse is still a protected character, it’s just Steamboat Willie, the original short, that is technically available for anybody to use. The disclaimer is delivered with a very intentionally comedic tone. It gives one the impression that maybe The Mouse Trap is going to be some sort of horror/comedy, something that knows how cheap and silly it is, and plans to have fun with it. Unfortunately, there’s nothing fun going on here.
The movie is set at an arcade where some young adults are gathered for an after-hours party for one of the employees. Unfortunately, her manager, who has a personal screening room on-site at the arcade, decides to watch his Steamboat Willie reel. Doing this causes him to be possessed by… something… for… reasons. He then dons his vintage Mickey Mouse mask, which wasn’t a thing in 1928, and starts killing everybody.
Now, as a Disney fan and avowed Mickey Mouse fan who has a Steamboat Willie LEGO model on his shelf and multiple pairs of Mickey ears, one might assume this movie offends me for turning such an icon into a horror slasher. And I am, but only because Mickey Mouse could have been so much better as a horror slasher.
It Doesn’t Do Enough With Its Homicidal Mickey Mouse
The Mouse Trap includes clips of Steamboat Willie, both over the opening credits and during a couple of scenes in the film itself. Initially, I wondered if perhaps these scenes were put in the film to make viewers aware of details in the short, in case it’d been a while since they’d seen it. If these moments were going to become relevant later, this would be a simple way of making sure people understood what was happening.
Unfortunately, that never happens. Other than the fact that the killer briefly watches Steamboat Willie and then stabs people while wearing a Mickey Mouse mask, there’s little else that ties the movie you’re watching into the material that was supposed to be the point of the film. Our killer Mickey uses a knife that might be an intentional reference to the knife that Mickey uses to peel potatoes at the end of Steamboat Willie, but the movie never makes that connection itself.
At one point, the film includes a version of ”Turkey in the Straw” the song from the animated short, done in a sinister style that works remarkably well as a horror theme. It could have become our killer Mickey’s signature, the way similar pieces of score often signal to the audience that Michael Myers or Jason Voorhies are coming. But it only appears once, early in the film, and then is never heard again.
Early Mickey Mouse Is Kind Of A Dick
One might think that turning Mickey Mouse into a slasher movie monster would be difficult, but it’s not as hard as it might seem, for the simple reason that early Mickey Mouse is kind of an asshole. The character would eventually find a home as an underdog hero, a guy who always finds a path to success no matter the odds against him. When the character was first created, that wasn’t who Mickey was.
Mickey was originally conceived as equal parts Douglas Fairbanks-style action hero and Charlie Chaplin slapstick comedian. As such, Mickey is more than a little mischievous in his early incarnation, and this could have been used to great effect.
It’s not clear if our antagonist goes on a killing spree because there’s something wrong with him or if there’s some sort of supernatural force at play. Our Mickey does appear to have magic powers, so the latter appears to be the case. If this is supposed to be the “Spirit of Mickey” at play, then the movie could be all about how this often angry and vindictive character isn’t the character most people know, but rather the “real Mickey Mouse.”
A large portion of Steamboat Willie is dedicated to Mickey playing “Turkey in the Straw” while using various animals (who are very clearly not enjoying themselves) as musical instruments. He pulls on a cat’s tail to get to meow and stretches out a goose’s neck to make it squawk. He’s really mean to these animals but he’s smiling the whole time.
He also plays a cow’s teeth like a xylophone. Our killer Mickey could have picked up a couple of mallets from a Wack-A-Mole machine and killed one of our characters by trying a similar trick, but alas, it was not to be. Mickey also fattens up the same cow earlier by force-feeding it hay, but does the Mickey from The Mouse Trap stab anybody in the face with a pitchfork? I kept waiting, but it never happened.
The Mouse Trap Is Getting A Sequel So Let’s Do It Right
Nobody was expecting The Mouse Trap to become an indie horror darling. I’m pretty sure all the people who made it knew they were making something ridiculous. But if you’re going to make something that’s a little wild, lean into it and go crazy.
A sequel, The Mouse Trap: Welcome to the Mickeyverse, is already slated for release on the 2025 movie schedule. Based on how the first film ends, I expect Mickey will be joined by a homicidal Minnie Mouse (played by one of the first film’s survivors). The other thing that happens in 2025 is that a few more early Mickey Mouse cartoons enter the public domain.
I hope the sequel uses them and does something interesting with the sequel that connects it to the cartoons that inspired it. If there’s any value in this premise, it’s not simply in putting a generic horror movie slasher in a Mickey mask, it’s in embracing the material in a way that makes the film something more than just a generic slasher movie.