Trap (2024)

Trap (2024)
Directed by: M Night Shyamalan
Written by: M Night Shyamalan
Starring: Ariel Donoghue, Hayley Mills, Josh Harnett, Saleka Night Shyamalan

TRAP
Directed by M Night Shyamalan,

Part of M Night Shyamalan’s enduring appeal as a filmmaker is you never know what you’re going to get: it could be a blend of family drama and ghost story, it could be a sci-fi epic, it could be an apocalyptic horror, or it could be whatever Lady in the Water was. Heck, it could even be, as is the case here, a serial killer thriller that doubles up as a super-long promo for his daughter’s singing career – the point is, the guy is unpredictable. Unfortunately, the same goes for the quality of his films, which range from excellent (Unbreakable, Split, The Sixth Sense) to excrement (The Happening, Glass, Avatar: The Last Airbender), rarely being middle of the road. But with Trap, I think he’s continued to break new ground by making his first truly average movie.

By now, you’ve probably seen the trailer several times – or at least the image of an enthusiastic employee telling a nervous Josh Harnett way more than he really should (on this point, be sure to stick around for the mid-credit sequence). But for those who haven’t been to the cinema in a while, Cooper (Harnett) is a loving father who takes his daughter Riley (Donoghue) to see her favourite artist: Lady Raven (Saleka Shyamalan). At first, it seems like any other arena pop show: oodles of screaming teenagers, a fancy light show, and some earworm song. However, in a preposterous turn of events, made even stupider in light of Taylor Swift cancelling multiple shows over a terror threat on the day this came out, we learn it’s also a trap to catch a mysterious serial killer known as The Butcher: a sick sadist who is on his thirteenth victim. This news gets Cooper sweating at the collar. Cue a game of cat and mouse as he tries to cover up his secret from FBI profiler Dr. Josephine Grant (Mills) and her team as they go into the audience, picking out men to interrogate. Will he make it to the encore?

It’s a bold setup for Shyamalan since the plot point, which would typically be a second half or even ending twist, is right there in the synopsis. There’s no big 180 or pulling the rug out moment here – Shyamalan left those behind with The Visit. Cooper isn’t caught in a game of some sort himself. Nope, he’s the killer, and we know that from the beginning, which is fine since it’s already a decent enough premise for a thriller. And while the movie never quite sells the suggestion that all Cooper’s plates could come crashing down any second, enough new problems arise that you’re rarely relaxed. Unfortunately, most of these are dealt with through luck rather than by cunning. It doesn’t help that we’re never explicitly told why he’s so scared of being questioned – with 3000 other men in the FBI’s sights, surely a master manipulator can get away with his secret identity intact. For my headcanon, I had to believe it was his mobile phone, but the ‘just cause’ attitude is typical of a film that relies on characters making terrible decisions – particularly Cooper. Thus, much of Act Two seems like a battle of wits between two idiots.

Some of the other plot points are so weak that they are funny, with the explanation for how they know he’s going to be at the show being particularly laughable. Unfortunately, Shyamalan doesn’t lean more into this, introducing farfetched contrivances and creaky engineering where we could get black comedy. To the extent we get character drama, it also seems to be about introducing the next story beat rather than using it to explore character relationships. Things like how Cooper’s family might react are raised but barely explored in favour of finding the next bit of action. It also never feels like Shyamalan does enough with the setting. Granted, he makes the concert seem believable, and much thought has clearly gone into selling Lady Raven’s aesthetic. Yet we don’t get enough of a sense of the arena’s geography, nor does he find that balance between claustrophobia and a huge scale needed to give the police’s gradual searches urgency. More often than not, Cooper takes a silly risk that could draw attention to himself rather than desparately trying to get out of an ever-worsening situation. On a similar point, it’d help if we had more suspense around the fate of his current victim, with the ticking clock introduced far too late (along with several other elements). In that respect, it fails at both being an exciting thriller and the basic building blocks of storytelling.

Yet there’s only so much I could dislike it. The pacing is tight enough that you’re never more than ten minutes away from another obstacle or plot convenience being introduced and another person believing Cooper’s increasingly ludicrous stories. Plus, while the ending drags, I eventually came around to the way it would keep threatening to completely leave reality behind before hanging on by a thread. It helps that the main cast is top-notch. Harnett’s slick sociopathy is entertaining enough that we enjoy being in on the ruse. I particularly liked the moments where he smiles, reminding us that as stressful as the situation is, he kills people because he enjoys it. The simplicity is refreshing since Shyamalan’s weakest moments as a writer are often when he forces a single reason for his villains to act the way that they do – Split, I’m thinking of you. Thankfully, he doesn’t do this too much with Cooper, though the few bits of backing story we get seem like lazy, cliched afterthoughts. Donoghue is maybe the highlight, though, completely selling her fandom to the artist who is right on the cusp of being uncool. I was ultimately more invested in her having a good concert experience than anything else in the movie.