Trap: The real trap is your expectations.
When I initially walked out of Trap, my initial reaction was that M Night Shyamalan’s latest thriller was, to put it mildly, terrible. However, when I feel that a movie is this bad of a miss I like to take a step back and analyze the film from different perspectives to make sure I’m being fair. Is the director trying to say something that I missed? Am I viewing this film through the correct lens? Did I fall for a…..trap? While I don’t dismiss how I felt about the movie while watching it, it’s always a good exercise to challenge yourself and dive deeper into why something didn’t work for you. After reflection, the conclusion I came to is that Trap is a tale of two halves. The first half is tolerable, the second half is terrible. It’s also unapologetically a promotional video for Saleka Shyamalan’s music career, so be prepared for a lot of contemporary, Ariana Grande style music throughout this film.
When I first saw the trailer for M. Night Shyamalan’s new thriller Trap, I’ll admit I was very intrigued. A serial killer trapped in an arena by the police is the type of original, high concept idea that is becoming increasingly rare. I also have a penchant for movies that take place inside of an arena. It’s a layout that audiences are familiar with, and you can typically use the event in the background as a timing device to build tension and stakes. Personally, I’ve never been a huge fan of M. Night Shyamalan movies. His ideas are always high-concept and interesting, and the fact that he has been able to develop his own unique style as a director is impressive and should be respected. However, his scripts are overly expository, and he too often oversaturates his films with all of his ideas to the point that none of them have any oxygen to breathe. His dialogue between characters sounds very unnatural, like the first draft of a conversation in a Bethesda game. I understand the dialogue style in Shyamalan’s scripts is purposeful to create an elevate, surreal feel to his movies, but honestly it usually doesn’t work for me. I’ll give him credit that his movies are unique, and Trap certainly hits all the usual beats of an M. Night Shyamalan production. That’s sort of the main problem I see with this film, I don’t think this script and style is the best fit for this type of concept. Shyamalan’s past films have concepts that are more rooted in supernatural or mystic elements.. Trap is grounded somewhat in realism. Sure, tactically it doesn’t make much sense for the police to set up a concert to catch a serial killer they apparently have very no information on (It takes place in Philadelphia, so my guess is this guy). But it’s not like they’re hunting an alien or anything. As high-concept as Trap is, I actually don’t think it’s high-concept enough.
The film begins with Cooper (Played by Josh Harnett) arriving at an arena with his daughter Riley (played by Ariel Donoghue) to see Lady Raven perform, a contemporary musical artist in the same vein as Ariana Grande. Lady Raven is played by Shyamalan’s daughter, Saleka Shyamalan. Josh Harnett and Ariel Donoghue are pretty good as a father-daughter combo. Harnett is very good as a goofy, caring dad who is trying to connect with his daughter, and Donoghue is exactly how you’d expect a teenager to act at a concert. Their relationship is very believable and very funny at times. My favorite sequence is where Riley is explaining the term “crispy” to Cooper that is heartwarning, albeit very cringy. The movie is at its best when its smaller and more confined to the arena, centered around Cooper trying to balance his responsibilities as a dad and escaping the situation he is in. At the arena, they meet an energetic t-shirt vendor who unprompted gives Cooper all the information he needs to form an escape plan. He informs Cooper that they are looking for a serial killer known as “The Butcher”, and gives him some other key information like an NPC in Skyrim. Unfortunately, our friendly T-shirt vendor had not seen the trailer, otherwise he would have known that Cooper was in fact……”The Butcher”. From there, the movie follows Cooper as he attempts to find a way past the police blockade and outside the arena. This is where the movie tows the line between tolerable and terrible, because there seems to be a rather noticeable gap between what the audience is told and what is shown. Cooper’s process for solving the puzzle is less methodically moving pieces around a chess board to find cracks in the armor, and more just throwing darts but somehow stumbling across the information he needs. The film gets to its destination, but Cooper loses credibility as “The Butcher” in my opinion because of this. It’s hard to picture him as a meticulous, OCD ridden serial killer when all Cooper does is panic and act super weird. The audience has to make a lot of leaps to get where the film wants the audience to get to. Personally, I found it a bit exhausting to do this much work but it’s a functional film nonetheless.
The second half of the film is where it really falls apart, because here is what happens next: Cooper is able to get him and Riley backstage by lying about Riley having terminal cancer (Cooper was told earlier that backstage was the only way past the blockade), where he then corners Lady Raven and tells her that he is…(pause for dramatic effect) ….”The Butcher”……and he will kill a man he has trapped (Like the name of the movie) in his basement unless Lady Raven lets them leave with her in her limousine. There’s a lot of bad filmmaking in the second half of this film that I do not have time to unpack, so I’m going to limit to three specific notes. The first is that for the second half of the movie, we are outside the arena which means we are now farther from one of strongest devices of this film. The movie feels less constricted once outside the arena, but not in a good way. The film becomes aimless, leading to it spiraling in multiple directions which brings us to the second note: There are 3 endings to the film. When you think you’ve reached the climax and Cooper is finally going to be caught, there is another sequence. It’s like Shyamalan couldn’t decide on an ending, so he just put all 3 in there. It’s sloppy, borderline incoherent, and all-around very disorganized to watch. The third and final note is that Saleka Shyamalan is basically tasked with carrying the last half of this film with Harnett. When Saleka Shyamalan is on stage during the concert, she’s pretty convincing. She plays well with the crowd, looks comfortable on a stage, and is believable as a music star. Once she gets offstage though, it’s clear that she’s not a strong actor. She is given a lot of screentime despite the fact that her acting is really stilted and unpolished, especially compared to Harnett on screen. Honestly, I don’t blame her at all, she’s just asked to do way too much for her skillset. It feels like the basketball coach insisting that the offense run through his son in the most important game of the year, even though the son is the eighth best player on the team. It’s not all on her, but it affects the film in a negative way.
But look, M. Night Shyamalan didn’t make this film for us. He made it to promote his daughter’s career, which he basically told us. As a father, that was nice of him. But you can wait for this movie to become available on streaming. I guess the real trap was getting the audience to watch his daughter’s concert all along.
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