Even though Trapped Inn sounded a lot like a standard Lifetime fare, I was baffled to see the 91% Rotten Tomatoes score. Comedian Matt Rife—who is quite the rage these days (check out Lucid on Netflix if you want to know why)—being part of the cast made me further optimistic. Alas, the actual movie turned out to be as atrocious as the title. Then I found out it was actually made during the pandemic and is now being pulled out of the cold storage to cash in on Rife’s growing popularity. Well, I’m not sure how the comedian is feeling about that. He is a great artist, but if Trapped Inn is anything to go by, then acting is certainly not his forte. Anyway, if you’re here, then you must have been unfortunate enough to watch Trapped Inn and are looking for an explanation of its choppy ending. Let’s get on with that.
Spoilers Ahead
What happens in the movie?
An American cycling team of eight—Greg, Connor, Cruz, Steffan, Daniel, Jeremy, and Simon—and their coach, Lemeiux (we’re calling him Coach from here on), goes to stay at an inn in the middle of rural mountainside France. The agenda is team bonding and training for some upcoming competition (Tour de France, I suppose). Greg is the best in the bunch, and happens to be the de facto team leader with an unnecessarily mean attitude. Connor is the new entrant who has an expected rivalry with Greg. The innkeepers—a husband-wife duo, Jean-Luc and Natalie—seem overly friendly and extremely erotic (for each other, though). There are also a bunch of young and attractive women staying in the inn, and these young boys are very excited about that. Not Greg, though; he has a girlfriend who is arriving on the next day. Since he’s the best one, the coach has given him that privilege. Coach himself is having quite a good time. Two of the girls—Anne and Bianca—start hanging out with the guys and go back to the room with the coach, making the guys a bit jealous.
Next morning, Connor sees Jean-Luc leaving with a shovel and something wrapped up—that seems a lot like a body. Realizing he’s been noticed, the man tells Connor that he’s going to run some errands. That’s the last of Jean-Luc we see, and Natalie also doesn’t appear again. My guess would be Natalie is the first one that got killed by the alien smoke monster, and Jean-Luc thought it would be best to leave the place with his wife’s body (the shovel is clearly for digging a grave and burying her). Anyway, Andrea arrives, and Connor is instantly smitten by her. Greg is still being a prick to everyone, but he is genuinely happy to see his girlfriend. During the training, Greg suffers an accident and hurts himself pretty badly. He’s brought back to the inn by Coach, Cruz, and Steffan. Connor returns shortly, but Daniel, Jeremy, and Simon don’t return. Coach goes out to look for them but returns empty-handed. Meanwhile, there’s this news of a virus killing many people and a subsequent announcement of a pandemic. Greg’s injury also appears to be more serious than how it seemed at first. He’s clearly in need of a hospital, but with the announcement, they can’t leave the inn. All of a sudden, there’s an earthquake (or so they think), which further complicates the situation, although everyone survives without a scratch. The next day, Bianca wakes up in the middle of nowhere and finds Anne dead beside her (we’re not sure how they ended up there in the first place). Bianca returns to the inn, but the group argues over letting her inside, believing she might be infected. As they argue, the poorly CGI-clad smoke monster comes out of nowhere (that’s the first time the group sees it) and kills Bianca. By the time Coach opens the door and lets her in, it’s too late.
What is really going on?
It’s not hard for us to realize this is no virus and most likely an alien thing. But in a movie like Trapped Inn, characters are always dumb, and ninety percent of them are expendable. So it’s not surprising that Cruz and Steffan would go outside and do a bit of chilling, perfectly aware that the smoke thing can come at any moment. That’s exactly how it goes, as we see (along with Coach, Connor, Greg, and Andrea from inside) Cruz and Steffan succumbing to the smoke monster.
What follows is the frustrating ordeal of watching the remaining four trying hard to survive while Coach starts going crazy and Greg’s health deteriorates. Like what always happens in situations like this, the group faces a shortage of food, and there’s no other option but to venture outside and look for some. Fortunately, there’s a neighbor not far from the house, and Coach and Connor decide to check out their place. To their surprise, the neighbor turns out to be alive (and pretty hostile), and points a shotgun at them. He also just happens to be American but refuses to help out Coach and Connor, as he thinks it’s futile. Too bad for him, as Coach gets into a scuffle with him, takes away the shotgun, and kills him. Connor is horrified to see Coach doing something like that. But Coach convinces him that it’s either the creepy man or them, so he didn’t have a choice. That’s still acceptable, but then he proposes that they abandon Greg and Andrea—as Greg’s health condition is a concern already—and make a run for themselves. That agitates Connor, and in a moment of rage, he ends up choking Coach to death. However, he hides it from Greg and Andrea, and it’s not particularly difficult to put the blame on the smoke monster. We get to know about it much later in the movie, though, when Connor confesses, but Greg and Andrea assure him that he did the right thing after all.
Do Connor And Andrea Survive?
Greg was a goner the moment he had the freak accident, and we all knew it was only a matter of time till he perished. The rivalry between Connor and Greg fades away, though, as we see the former champion cyclist is more than okay to give his blessing to the protégé—regarding Andrea, if you know what I mean. Greg dies in peace, though, with Andrea by his side. For the next two months, the smoke monster doesn’t pay a visit. Connor is contemplating making his move on Andrea now, which he finally does. And it works out, given she has always liked him and they are probably the two last remaining people on the earth, so they might as well get on with it. So they do, like it’s their final day. They fearlessly go into the hot tub outside when the smoke monster arrives, but surprisingly, it leaves without doing anything to them. As Connor and Andrea look up, they get a glimpse of a spaceship.
Trapped Inn ends with Connor and Andrea walking out of the inn with their suitcases, back to normality hopefully. We get a better look at the UFO on top of them. The screen goes black, but then we see a news broadcast getting interrupted, and the screen reads that it was some AI who arranged for an alien attack. So who are the villains here? AI or Aliens? I don’t think even the director is sure about that. And I would suggest you to not lose your head over it. Hopefully, we will see Matt Rife joking about the whole thing (and the fake Rotten Tomatoes score) in an upcoming standup.
