“Trap” - Film Review
For better or worse, M. Night Shyamalan’s career is built on his ability to pull off a magnificent, upending twist. The Sixth Sense and its often-parodied third-act reveal launched Shyamalan’s career. Now, with each film, the audience wonders how Shyamalan will pull the rug out from under them. In the case of his latest, Trap, it feels like Shyamalan has revealed his hand in the trailer. The setup is simple: Cooper (Josh Hartnett) takes his daughter, Riley (Ariel Donoghue), to her dream concert by popstar Lady Raven (Saleka Shyamalan), but the entire concert is a trick. A trap, if you will. There’s a serial killer, The Butcher, running around Philadelphia, and the FBI has reason to believe that The Butcher is attending this concert. And he is, because it’s Cooper. Now, as a concert plays in the background, Cooper has to plot his escape while making sure his daughter still has the best night of her life.
courtesy of warner bros
All that information is revealed in the trailer, so everyone is wondering what’s next. What can Trap morph into? The answer to that question is a concert film. For much of its runtime, Trap delivers on the concert experience that seems to be gaining popularity these last few months with the likes of Beyoncé, Billie Eilish, BLACKPINK, and Taylor Swift. Saleka Shyamalan is a popstar in her own right who has opened for acts like Boyz II Men. She wrote and performed fourteen original songs for Trap. As the movie progresses and Hartnett’s character is growing desperate to escape the stadium, Saleka Shyamalan flexes her acting chops as well. Like the central father-daughter relationship in the film, Trap seems to exist because of the father-daughter relationship between M. Night and Saleka. It’s clear there’s so much love between them, not only in a familial manner, but as artists and collaborators.
courtesy of warner bros.
Beyond the Lady Raven concert, Trap is an escape film. We’ve seen this structure before. The single setting with a large, contained audience and someone who is trying to escape. Trap upends the expectation by not telling the story through the eyes of the investigators, but through those of the caged serial killer who’s trying to find a way out. Shyamalan is an expert in building tension, and the audience can feel the fear radiating from Hartnett. His performance as Cooper is riveting, and Shyamalan keeps the camera close on him, obsessing over every tiny twitch of his facial muscles. The film does throw out some vague mental health diagnoses with reckless abandon, and acts as though OCD and mommy issues are a gateway to becoming a serial killer. The justification for Cooper’s actions is the film’s weakest attribute, and Trap would have been just fine never explaining his need to kill.
So what is the twist? Obviously, to preserve the moviegoing experience, the twist won’t be revealed here, but in that vein, Trap has no twist. At least, not the kind the audience expects from Shyamalan. There are unexpected turns along the way, but never that full-scale, movie-changing u-turn. That works in the film’s favor, freeing Shyamalan from the expectations and burdens of continuously creating a story that upends itself. Trap is a fun ride whose cards are on the table from the get-go, but that doesn’t make it any less tense or fun. A father-daughter flick mixed with a heist film, Trap keeps you guessing in a vintage Shyamalan way.
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