TRAP

While there are a couple of decent concepts in Trap, with definite potential for nail-biting suspense, M. Night Shyamalan half-asses them all as he sacrifices narrative credibility for lame twists.

Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan has stated that Trap was built around the high-concept premise of The Silence of the Lambs at a Taylor Swift concert, in this case Philadelphia fireman Cooper Adams taking his daughter to a Lady Raven concert, only to discover an elaborate sting operation to catch serial killer The Butcher, who he also happens to be.

The good news is that the twists and turns shown prominently in the trailer (and honestly, mostly kill all the suspense in the film’s first half hour) are just a small part of the complete story. The bad news? All the other curveballs professional ‘gotcha’ filmmaker Shyamalan laboriously concocts are so amateurish and unbelievable, I’d rather watch the trailer in a continuous loop.

Some of the ideas in the script are decent – if predictable – but it seems the man who gave us The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable can no longer be bothered to follow through on those ideas. Instead he layers twist upon twist to keep the audience guessing, without ensuring high stakes or even a modicum of plausibility (case in point: wanna know how Cooper escapes a limo surrounded by Lady Raven fans? Your guess is as good as mine).

Also not helping Trap is that large swathes of the picture appear to be solely filmed to highlight the talents of singing-dancing-acting Saleka Shyamalan, who happens to be the director’s daughter. This annoys already in the way too drawn-out concert snippets in the picture’s opening half, but really starts to grate during some laughably bad hero moments he grants her in the latter half of the film.

Trap has a handful of redeeming features, like a crisp cinematography and an enjoyably ambiguous leading role for Josh Hartnett, whose return to Hollywood has been a big success so far, but those are offset by all of the above and as inane an explanatory finale as you’re likely to see this year.

release: 2024

director: M. Night Shyamalan

starring: Josh Hartnett, Saleka Shyamalan, Ariel Donoghue, Alison Pill