Movie: Trap
Production Company: Blinding Edge Pictures
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Producers: Ashwin Rajan, Marc Bienstock, M. Night Shyamalan
Scriptwriter: M. Night Shyamalan
Main Cast: Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue, Saleka Night Shyamalan, Hayley Mills, Alison Pill
Release Date: August 2nd 2024 (US)
Running Time: 105 minutes
Certificate: 15
Introduction
Well, this film is certainly getting trapped between its biggest fans and most devout critics. And this should hardly be surprising given the fact Trap is brought to you by the most marmite director in Hollywood: M. Night Shyamalan. Despite a pretty good performance from Josh Harnett (who also stars in Operation Fortune which this writer took too long to realise), the film ironically falls into the trap of believing its cleverer than it is despite the twists being obvious. From this point on a firm SPOILER warning is in effect. Anyway, without further ado let’s get into our review of the film now!
Synopsis
Trap follows Philadelphia firefighter Cooper Adams (Hartnett) who is attending a concert with his daughter Riley (Donoghue), to celebrate her good grades. However, before he starts getting dad of the year nominations it turns out that he is living a double life as a serial killer called The Butcher. This becomes apparent as the FBI try to trap him in the concert building however like Everett Lynch in Criminal Minds he keeps slipping through their traps at every occasion. Can the FBI track down Cooper before he takes yet another victim (in addition to the one we see at the start of the film) either in the form of his wife, Rachel, or pop star Lady Raven, whose concert he and Riley are attending.
Analysis
Josh Harnett’s Performance in Trap
As mentioned in the introduction, Trap would not function as well as it can without the monumental effort from Josh Hartnett having to play both the psychotic serial killer and the loving family man simultaneously. And for the most part he manages it as despite some truly reprehensible behaviour and numerous occasions where he attempts to throw others under the bus, there’s some part of his performance which truly convinces the audience that he could be a loving family man. Just look at the opening prior to the least surprising twist in an M. Night Shyamalan film to date.
Here, he’s paying attention to Riley and this is probably here to throw the audience off the obvious reveal. However, in something which is not a slight on Hartnett’s performance at all, if you just look at the cast 9 times out of 10 it’s the most famous cast member. Anyway, Josh Hartnett deserves all the credit in the world for zipping between two polar opposite performances in a pretty middling script, which we will touch on later. Overall, far from his best but a pretty good performance nonetheless.
The Script in Trap
Speaking of Trap’s script and shock horror (pun very much intended) it’s a bit all over the place. This might have something to do with another point from the introduction: the film thinks it’s cleverer than it actually is. Whilst this is a problem which plagues a lot of Shyamalan’s filmography (here’s looking at you Signs and The Happening), Trap has it particularly badly. This can be seen with the most obvious reveal about Cooper being the Butcher. But this is also evident with the many, many Scooby Doo contraptions they use to keep the Butcher out of custody. Look at the ending where the film thinks it’s being clever by having The Butcher pick a bike spoke up before getting into a police van.
This isn’t clever it’s just pointless and shameless sequel baiting as we can’t imagine a sequel for this has done is denying the audience a decent ending for no good reason. This overall point also bleeds into another problem: the fact it tries to be self serious but it’s actually kind of ridiculous. And this means that there’s an uneven tone as some of the stuff the film does is so stupid that it actively takes you out of the admittedly limited story.
Summary
To summarise Trap, this is a decent film which is trapped between either being a very self serious film about the FBI trying to catch a serial killer or a daft film where a serial killer has Everett Lynch levels of luck when it comes to evading the FBI. All this is at the expense of a pretty good Josh Hartnett performance which will likely go unnoticed in the confusing mess that is M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap.
Overall Rating: 5.5/10 – Above Average
Target Audience: 15+
Content Warning: Moderate Violence and Gore, Mild Profanity, Mild Alcohol, Drugs and Smoking, Moderate Frightening and Intense Scenes
Recommendation: No
