Review by Frank Plowright

There’s no pretensions about Night Trap. Cullen Bunn starts with a serial killer watching a horror movie calling out errors, moves to a group of college girls arriving at a property they’ve rented in the woods and then cuts to the killers waiting outside. It’s a slasher movie in comics form and let there be no mistake about that, and there’s not a shred of originality about it, yet it ticks every formula box and isn’t that what we want?

You know the score: a group of guys arrive to complete the party; the water’s not working, so someone has to check the old shed out the back; there’s no phone signal; every channel on the TV’s showing the same horror movie, and there’s Kelly, the girl who’s uncertain about everything from the start while everyone else is blasé. Will Bunn adhere strictly to the template by making sure she’s the only survivor?

There’s some stiffness to JB Bastos’ art, but he sets the scene well and conveys the tension as the formula plays out. A lot of staged killings feature, and Bastos knows we want to see blood, and duly provides it. Oh, hang on, that’s actually colourist Robby Beyard, but Bastos guides the way there with his layouts.

Only in suggesting there’s a repeating cycle playing out does Bunn stray from the slasher movie template, although via flashbacks he sneakily provides two for one. The adherence to formula makes this seem almost an exercise for Bunn, but fans of slasher horror are going to love it.