VERDICT: Too few surprises and too many endings make for a tension-free thriller from M. Night Shyamalan, despite Josh Hartnett’s best efforts.
When the trailer for M. Night Shyamalan movie gives away a twist, viewers naturally assume that the film has at least one more trick up its sleeve. Not so with Trap, which announced its one surprise well in advance; whether or not ticket-holders go in knowing the director’s latest narrative gimmick, they will be subjected to a meandering, lackadaisical game of cat and mouse.
Usually, the architecture of a thriller involves introducing a complicated scenario and then slowly but surely ratcheting up the tension; with Trap, Shyamalan has chosen to set it and forget it, spelling out the circumstances of the titular snare and then rarely bothering to introduce new elements or to elevate the suspense. And when the writer-director moves past his original setup, the stakes disappear as the plot holes widen.
Josh Hartnett stars as Cooper, a fireman, and seemingly average dorky dad taking his young daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue, Blueback) to see her favorite singer, Lady Raven (Saleka Night Shyamalan), in concert. The Shyamalan switch-’em-up drops early: Cooper also happens to be a serial killer known as The Butcher, and authorities have learned that The Butcher will be at the
Lady Raven concert. The police have blocked the exits and are randomly questioning adult men. (Based on what the cops know from surveillance footage, The Butcher could fit one of several ethnic, age, or body-type categories.)
Cooper gets clued in on the dragnet by a friendly merch-table employee and spends the rest of the concert trying desperately to stay one step ahead of his pursuers, led by FBI profiler Dr. Josephine Grant (a criminally underused Hayley Mills, whose presence prompts thoughts of more entertaining films about traps and parents).
Had Trap played into the claustrophobia of Cooper’s efforts to escape the massive arena, it might have scored some points as a locked-room thriller writ large, bolstered by Hartnett’s chillingly effective portrayal of a monster with a regular-guy mask.
Unfortunately, the film loses its way by pushing Lady Raven to become a major player, with an extended final act that exits the arena, where the wild implausibilities of the story turn all the more obvious; The Butcher repeatedly resists capture, suggesting near-superhuman abilities, and the pivotal explanations (even when delivered by an actress as talented as Alison Pill, who plays Cooper’s wife) make no sense at all.
Hartnett, Pill, Mills, and Donoghue deliver performances that merit a better movie. As for Saleka Night Shyamalan, whose acting and singing get a hefty chunk of the running time, one can only hope that she will follow in the footsteps of Angelica Huston and Sofia Coppola, whose undistinguished dad-directed debuts (in A Walk with Love and Death and The Godfather Part III, respectively) were merely early missteps on paths to greatness.
Trap won’t rank among M. Night Shyamalan’s best work, nor the memorable films of distinguished cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom — the go-to director of photography for both Luca Guadagnino and Apichatpong Weerasethakul delivers workmanlike visuals, whether shooting interiors (particularly the arena’s fluorescent lighting) or the streets of the director’s beloved Philadelphia. It turns out that a mediocre project can be its kind of trap.
