Evil Dead Trap

Nami Tsuchiya hosts a late-night television show devoted to strange and amateur footage. When a videotape arrives showing what appears to be a young woman being tortured and killed, Nami becomes convinced the recording is not genuine. She traces the tape to a disused factory and travels there with a camera crew, intending to investigate and film a segment about it. Once inside, the group finds itself hunted by a mysterious figure who has rigged the building with deadly traps, and the members are killed one after another.

The film is a Japanese horror-thriller directed by Toshiharu Ikeda and written by Takashi Ishii, produced by Satoshi Jinno and Michio Otsuka. It was released in May 1988 and runs 100 minutes. It is the fourth of the six features Ikeda directed, following Mermaid Legend and Scent of a Spell, and it sits between those earlier thrillers and his later work. Miyuki Ono plays Nami, with Yuji Honma, Hitomi Kobayashi, Eriko Nakagawa, Aya Katsuragi and Masahiko Abe among the cast.

On IMDb the film holds a rating of 6.2 from roughly 4,500 votes, while on TMDB it has a 6.1 from about 100 votes. The two audience scores sit close together, indicating a modest but settled reputation rather than wide acclaim. Its standing rests on its place in late-1980s Japanese horror rather than on commercial scale.