Trapped

USA/TV Movie/92 minutes/1989

Tagline- She's spending the night at the office... trying to stay alive

Choice Lines-

Mary An Marshall-I thought you said you didn’t like violence ?

John Doe-I said I didn’t believe in it. I never said I didn’t like it.

(when the pair is contemplating measures to take down the baseball bat wielding madman)

In this made for TV film originally screened on USA Network, a woman employee in charge of the security and maintenance of a high-rise building is trapped there at night by a maniac. The building is owned by one Harold Manning who also controls  NTX Corporation, and it comprises of several shops and office complexes.

The woman, Mary An Marshall, stays back late to finish work and then tries to leave home along with a colleague. Then she discovers that the building's locks have been disabled and the phones are all dead. After several close brushes with the baseball bat wielding maniac, in one of which her colleague is battered to death, Mary Ann faces off with her tormentor in a vehicle chase at the parking lot of a lower level. She is helped in her attempts by a mysterious stranger who calls himself John Doe and secretly stays on the 58th floor of the building, to steal industrial secrets from NTX Corporation.

Although Mary Ann is timid and seeks to hide throughout the night till the building revives from automatic lockdown at 6 am, John is all fire to defeat the assailant in order to prevent police suspicion on him for murder of several guards and office workers. His position is perfectly understandable given that he is an encroacher in the premises, engaged in seriously illegal work, and it would be difficult for him to dodge the police as they close in on him. After a suspenseful encounter with the madman where the duo try to hide in the shadows of both sides of a double lift, the man breaks John's arm and is himself hurt by Mary. In the ensuing confusion, both manage to evade the killer and rush to the 26th floor, where Mary's office is situated. 

After John encourages Mary to draw out the killer and kill or capture him, Mary goes to the 5th floor parking level and starts a deadly vehicular chase with the killer in hot pursuit. John is led there by the screeching tyre sounds and notices that the killer's car is leaking fuel. He immediately acts and puts fire through his lighter on the fuel track that causes the killer's car to explode. John saves Mary Ann at the nick of time and as the two embrace, John tells a clearly distraught Mary to handle the police even as he stays out of the whole business.

 When the building opens at sunrise, the police arrive and question Mary Ann who recounts her ordeal, and that she was helped by a stranger whom she can barely recognise anymore, thus helping John to mask his identity and stay out of trouble. At the end, she returns home and is greeted by John who has bandaged his broken arm. The reason for the murderous rampage is revealed early on, in the establishing shots of the movie itself, where a series of dusty photographs and newspaper clippings state that NTX Corporation was responsible for a toxic substance spill, which resulted in the death of a boy. The boy's father is the murderer, and is clearly disturbed and bent on revenge. He preserves his wife's corpse at home, keeps re-reading the press coverage of the industrial disaster and works as a daytime employee at the building. This enables him to get a strong idea of the internal workings and security mechanisms of the building, such that he is also able to access the power and telephone switchboards and insert timers into them, in order to disable the locks and emergency diallers. Along the way at night, he kills Mary's colleague Renni, all the night guards and security personnel as well as Harold Manley, the businessman who runs the corporation and resides in his office at the64th floor, with his chest found stabbed with a knife and newspaper reports on the disaster.

Trapped is a well-made, taut thriller with good pacing and tolerable acting. The music is typically reminiscent of 1980s thriller movies, neither too imposing nor too light or intermittent. As a high-rise thriller, the feeling of claustrophobia and fear is well pointed out by realistic portrayal of the characters' situations, their insecurities and instincts aiding them to save their lives from a ruthless man. The TV aesthetic is noticeable with cheap production values and grimy, dim lit photography. However, the movie does does hold your attention from beginning till end, and Catherine Quinlan as Mary Ann is especially effective as the vulnerable and lonely woman who must confront her worst fears and reservations in order to just survive. There was nothing outstanding in any of the scenes by way of clever framing or cinematography, however there was one scene which amply invoked a sense of cat and mouse game, where first Mary Ann and later the killer are framed in the glass walls of the unfinished condominium and their image is split several times, one as the prey and the other as a hunter. The movie is directed by the underrated Fred Walton, who had earlier made the cult horror When a Stranger Calls (1979) about a psycho terrorising a babysitter, and its eerie sequel When a Stranger Calls Back (1993).

The movie has only been released on VHS by MCA/Universal Home Video, and I too watched a pretty dull print with many frame jumps. But thoroughly enjoyable !