Trap
Josh Hartnett is terrific as a serial killer father in M. Night Shyamalan's creative and unpredictable new thriller.
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Ah, M. Night Shyamalan. One of the sole mainstream filmmakers who can consistently have two audience members sitting next to each one, one finding the movie to be great, the other finding it to be a trainwreck. And neither of them are wrong.
This has always been one of the big reasons why Shyamalan is one of my favorite directors in the business. Because outside of the universally beloved movies (“The Sixth Sense”) or universally hated (“The Last Airbender,” “After Earth”), his movies are reliably provocative.
After his streak of blunders, Shyamalan returned to critics’ and audience’s good graces with “The Visit” and “Split.” And since then, he’s been churning out a new movie nearly every year (or every two years).
“Trap” is his latest thriller, starring Josh Hartnett, who is currently having a comeback tour of his own after his role in “Oppenheimer,” and it has almost everything you love and hate about Shyamalan and his movies.
The film has a spectacular setup, Cooper Adams (Hartnett) takes his 13-year-old daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to an Eras Tour-like concert for the pop superstar Lady Raven (Saleka Shyamalan). Cooper starts to quickly notice that there’s an unusual amount of police officers in attendance, much more than usual. After charming up a talkative vendor, Cooper is informed that the notorious serial killer known as The Butcher is in attendance, and that the entire concert is being set up as a trap to finally catch him.
Sounds engaging enough, right? Well, the premise doesn’t stop there. As it turns out, Cooper, alongside being a loving father and firefighter, also is the Butcher. Now, he’ll have to hustle and lie, to escape the concert without being found out.
The plot alone sounds incredibly promising and Shyamalan has always been a master at the elevator pitch. “Trap” has just about everything you love and hate about Shyamalan as a storyteller, minus a few hallmarks. The movie is able to grab you within the first 15 minutes, and once things start to hit the fan, you’re either going to be fully on board or groaning in frustration.
As Shyamalan has continued his nearly decade-long renaissance, he’s beginning to get more experimental again with his movies. There’s no doubt that “Trap” is exceptionally well-shot, especially when you have a cinematographer like Sayombhu Mukdeeprom serving as the DP. “Trap” accurately captures that overwhelming feeling that you get when you attend a large concert, and the discomfort continues to build once Cooper’s secret is revealed to us.
“Trap” largely plays out like a game of cat and mouse, but instead of focusing on the prey, we’re instead following around the predator. Throughout the first half of the movie, you are constantly changing your mind about whether or not you want to root for Cooper or pray for his downfall. Hartnett’s performance plays a large part in making this concept as effective as it is. As Cooper, he brings in his charisma, on the surface he seems like a good father, who loves his daughter more than anything. Whenever he’s brought into a situation that is more unpredictable, he begins to feel more awkward and even volatile. Hartnett’s TV heartthrob roots also play a large part in this characterization. You don’t want Cooper to be a bad guy, you want this all to be a giant misunderstanding. We haven’t ever seen Hartnett take on this kind of role before, and he excels at it, in one of the greatest villainous performances you’ll see all year.
Shyamalan has a knack for having his actors perform their dialogue in a way that on the surface feels unusually awkward. Sometimes it works exceptionally well, like in “The Visit,” while other times it makes the movie feel like a farce such was the case with “The Happening.” “Trap” falls into the former category, all of the awkward conversations play into the movie’s tone, eliciting laughs that feel genuine and intentional and gasps that feel earned.
Where “Trap” begins to fall apart is in its second act. While many of Shyamalan’s movies flow at a fairly brisk pace, the latter half of this film gets a bit too carried away with itself. You’re still always invested in everything that is transpiring on screen, but the game of cat and mouse begins to feel increasingly repetitive, and the heart that was initially present earlier in the movie starts to fade away.
The movie wraps itself up in a way that isn’t as satisfying as you might like. In some ways, you’ll leave “Trap” asking more questions than you had when you walked into the theater. While there are plenty of movies out there that have done this in clever ways, the ending of “Trap” isn’t as clever as Shyamalan clearly thinks it is. We can clearly guess what is going to happen next, there’s not much to debate.
Even with its shortcomings, “Trap” still delivers on the thrills. The movie’s unpredictable nature paired with Hartnett’s terrific performance make this the perfect kind of thriller to see on a summer afternoon with an active audience.