In an offer crammed with chaotic soap operas and classic detective productions, Quebec broadcasters rarely dare to program so-called genre series as the novelty. Trapped, halfway between the psychological thriller and the horror film.
Cut into six one-hour episodes, this miniseries begins Thursday at 10 p.m. on the addikTV channel, owned by TVA Group, with a very catchy, very murky first episode. A dangerous man in black, who wears a mesh mask looking Squid Game, kidnaps five people and locks them in cells in the basement of a bunker. The five victims wear an electric collar that activates from a distance.
The five hostages of Trapped do not know each other. They are the real estate broker Charles (Jean-Philippe Perras), the nurse Hélène (Brigitte Lafleur), the engineer Brigitte (Brigitte Poupart), the legal secretary Sabine (Schelby Jean-Baptiste) and the garbage collector Alain (Martin Dubreuil).
Each occupies a different dungeon, still Guantánamo style, and each undergoes a different form of torture. Sabine goes to the torment of the drop of water. Alain endures stifling heat. Charles hears alienating music, and so on. Certain scenes approach the limit of the bearable. In one of them, a prisoner throws his excrement at the camera which spies on him.
Trapped not for children, but for lovers of more twisted stuff. The executioner communicates with his five victims by loudspeaker. He reminds them “that there are consequences to their actions” and asks them if they sleep with a clear conscience.
Clearly, a traumatic bond unites the victims with their revenge-hungry torturer. But which one? At the same time as us, the characters of Trapped seek what connects them, in an atmosphere of paranoia and violence.
Sometimes the cell doors open and the hostages have a few minutes to talk to each other and develop escape strategies. However, their captor hears everything they say and enjoys watching them struggle in this giant mousetrap. A huge game of cruelty and manipulation.
At the end of the second episode, the viewer has virtually no clue to connect the protagonists to a common plot. This is one of the small faults of Trapped : more clues should have been distilled, especially since the series only lasts six hours.
At the third of the course, everything remains vague and it is impossible to speculate on the rest. Give us some juice if you want us to come back next week.
Also, the tortured voice of the torturer makes several lines inaudible. It is annoying. Same thing when the prisoners whisper and the music buries their dialogues. It’s unpleasant to have to constantly step back to understand parts of the script.
Going back in time, Trapped shows us the past of the five missing, who have not committed a crime and who, for the moment, have never crossed the path of the one who takes sadistic pleasure in making them suffer.
It’s really intriguing and well written by François Pagé (After), based on an idea by Yannick Savard (The blue Hour), the director of the miniseries. The five actors caught in this agonizing camera offer high-caliber performances. The scenes of persecution are far from easy to act out.
In short, if you hate Squid Game and other shows populated by unbalanced people, skip your turn to Trapped. Me, I want to know who is hiding under the hood of this “sick man”, says one of the victims of this psychopath.
Madam Lieutenant!
Those who believed that Myriam LeBlanc, aka Detective Sergeant Madeleine Depault, would succeed Gabrielle Simard (Geneviève Brouillette) at 31 were missing the (identification) plate.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY RADIO-CANADA
Geneviève Brouillette has been replaced by Ève Landry, who thus becomes the lieutenant of post 31.
It is the actress Ève Landry who took possession, Monday evening, of the large office with two doors of the lieutenant of the most buzzing police station on the small Quebec screen.
Her character is called Mélanie Charron, a tough and direct boss, allergic to fluff. I already love it. The troops of the 31st need a strong presence like his to extricate themselves from their collective slump.
The replacement for Stéphane Pouliot (Sébastien Delorme) in organized crime was also installed in his office on Monday. This is Manuel Dupuis (Sébastien Huberdeau), a seemingly calm detective sergeant, just slobbery enough. His Saturday night tête-à-tête with rider Ryan Robin (Dan Bigras) was a nice appetizer for the rest of the day.
Hypothesis, in closing: if the investigators insist so much on the case of the burnt dead guy, it is because it is hiding something much bigger. But what exactly?