It must be tricky marketing a M. Night Shyamalan movie. Reveal too much in the initial trailer for a movie like Trap, and it hinders the audience’s experience of the film. Reveal too little, and there is no clear hook for said audience to even step into the theater. Then there’s the tightrope the director himself must walk in unfolding the story: Trap is about a serial killer named Cooper (Josh Hartnett), who goes to a pop music concert with his daughter, only to find out that the event is an elaborate — wait for it — trap to catch him.
This is all revealed in the trailer, and in the first 30 minutes of the film. In a different, perhaps better version of this movie, that early reveal would have been disastrous — undercutting the effectiveness of a major plot twist. As the film stands — a fun, but half-hearted execution of a killer concept that relies more on sentiment than suspense — it’s just a mild bummer to find out so soon.
Trap drops us in media res, with father and daughter on their way to a concert. The trap is already set, and the players are all in motion. Cooper walks into it, distracted by the excitement of his daughter and the duty he feels as a dad. Let me take this moment to say: The sooner you dispel any rational thought about how illogical a law enforcement plan-a-concert trap is, the better! As a film, Trap isn’t particularly interested in convincing the viewer how this might actually work logistically; it’s not really what Shyamalan’s movie is about, and though it’s sometimes distractingly bad, it is also at times delightfully comedic. Instead, at least initially, the focus usually stays tight: on Cooper, his relationship with daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue, the sentimental heart of the film), and how difficult it can be balancing serial killing with parenthood. The struggle!
Much of the film’s execution rests on Harnett’s capable shoulders. A former teen heartthrob who has had memorable recent turns in eclectic projects such as Penny Dreadful, Oppenheimer, and The Bear, Hartnett compels as both girl-dad firefighter Cooper and maniacally focused serial killer The Butcher. He’s obviously having a great time, and his likability is the most convincing tool in his evasion arsenal. Here, Hartnett’s boyish good looks (even in his 40s) work in his favor; they have smoothed out into something slightly more relatable, aiding Shyamalan’s exploration of cultural assumptions, as Cooper uses his all-American (read: White) family man status to try to outrun the trap. It’s enough to make you wish the film played a little longer with the reveal of Cooper’s serial killing a bit longer, playing on our own assumptions about who gets to be a movie good guy and who doesn’t. Alas, it’s tricky being a M. Night Shyamalan movie.
The staging of the film’s concert setting, a production in its own right, is also impressive. As someone who has been to many arena shows filled with screaming fans in the last few years, most of this felt spot on (save, perhaps, for how many people were out of their seats and wandering the concession area during the show’s duration). It’s all held together by Saleka, a real-life R&B artist and daughter of Shyamalan, who plays fictional pop star Lady Raven. The most successful effort Trap makes is in convincing viewers this is a real concert, and in many ways this movie works better as a showcase for Saleka’s skills as a songwriter and performer than it does as a twisty thriller. There’s a fannish authenticity to how Riley, Cooper’s teen daughter, is obsessed with Lady Raven, and how she and all of the other concert-going extras know every lyric to every song.
Perhaps in part because the film itself feels at times like a multi-million-dollar showcase from a father to his daughter (Shyamalan is putting all of the other nepo-dads to shame), Trap’s highest stakes come in Cooper’s relationship with his own daughter. The film doesn’t imply that Cooper’s joy in witnessing his daughter’s joy at the Lady Raven concert is anything less than 100% genuine, or that he isn’t earnestly invested in the teen-girl machinations that have left Riley on the outs with her friend group. He is a serial killer who delights in chopping up innocent people, but he’s also a really good dad! Trap ultimately gets too distracted by half-hearted explorations of other topics — such as Cooper’s relationship with his absent mother, or the career of profiler Dr. Grant (Hayley Mills) — to truly devastate us with these themes. Generally, Trap reminded me of serial killer TV series You or Hannibal, but had far less time as a film to artfully navigate the discordant tonal shifts that a killer-protagonist story dictates.
But there are moments when that main plotline sings. In one particularly effective scene, Cooper watches from the sidelines as his daughter gets the chance to dance on stage. He gazes at her joy, the lights of the performance illuminating his smile. We’ve seen this character use his grin again and again to get away with things, but there is nothing calculated about his emotions here. The film lingers, living in this moment where everyone seems to be happy, letting the crushing potential of it all falling apart build. “Your daughter is going to remember this day for the rest of her life,” a well-meaning publicist tells Cooper. The audience and Cooper sit with the dramatic irony of the statement, wondering how, precisely, the prophecy will come to pass.
Within the Shyamalan pantheon, Trap skews closer to the superficial suspense of Old or the campy pleasures of The Happening than it does the raw, tension-filled ferocity of Split. It’s got a little too much on its plate and a little too much heart to be a sheer thrill ride, and it’s worth adjusting your expectations to that. Whatever else Trap may be, it is a Shyamalan movie through and through — ambitious in its initial concept, distracted in its thematic exploration, and delighted in its own twists. Twenty-five years after The Sixth Sense first knocked our socks off, at a time when every other Summer Olympics ad is shilling the “creative” power of AI, there’s something incredibly precious in a director who gets to make the movies he wants to make. Even when a Shyamalan film fails to trip us when it pulls the rug out from under us, there’s something increasingly sweet about the very human way they all try.
Trap is out in theaters now.
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