Trap

Trap is the latest film from director M. Night Shyamalan, which built up a decent following before release due to its trailer, which gives away one of the major hooks of the film. Since that hook was in the trailer, I will be detailing that in the plot summary, but for the purposes of this review I won’t be giving away anything else spoiler-related.

The film centres around a character named Cooper (played by Josh Hartnett) taking his daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to a concert for her favourite pop star, Lady Raven (played by Saleka Shyamalan, yes, the director’s daughter). Cooper soon notices the increased security, and some information is revealed by a guy working at a merch stand that the whole concert is a trap to catch a serial killer known as The Butcher. The twist- Cooper is the killer. This is confirmed to us through security footage on his phone in the trailer.

That’s the basic premise- it’s about Cooper being able to get out of the building without being sussed out by the police. The antagonist in this film is a criminal profiler played by Hayley Mills who is basically running the operation. It’s a Shyamalan movie, so I’m not concerned by the lack of realism- while a profiler would definitely be consulted in this kind of operation, they certainly wouldn’t be at the scene.

I was surprised by the lack of hokey dialogue in this movie that Shyamalan is known for; while there definitely are some examples, certainly coming from the character at the merch stand, which isn’t a complaint because he is one of the best parts of this movie!

I will say for the record, this isn’t a bad movie! It’s probably one of Shyamalan’s good movies. But that being said, I’m one of the people that thinks he’s only made three good movies, with only two of them being great. The one thing he has never been good at is comedy, and it’s really hit or miss in this movie.

There are some aspects that work, however. For one thing, it’s clear that there’s a lot of input to make the concert seem realistic. I’ve never been to a pop concert, but I have been to quite a few stadium shows, and they did a good job mimicking that aspect. I also think they did a good job with Lady Raven’s music for this film. There is definitely a bit of Lady Gaga influence in there, and it captures what is going on in music right now.

The biggest issue with this film would have to be that I think it goes on too damn long! I understand why they did it, but it’s very clear that they didn’t really know what to do for the last act of this movie. There are several times where I thought ‘this is where the film must end’ only to find it being dragged out more. I was surprised to find out after I got out of the cinema that this is only an hour and forty-five minutes long, but it feels like it goes on for two and a half!

Trap feels like a movie that was made to be a short film but was extended out to be a feature length production. Josh Hartnett is the standout performance, and he does very well playing both parts of his character. Even though the film went on for too long, there are some scenes towards the end in which he really sells the tension.

Personally, that’s one of the things that did it for me- there is a real sense of ‘what’s going to happen next?’. I will say that while there is another twist in the film that comes later on in the movie, it’s not a major twist and it doesn’t shake up the plot too much, so it’s not in line with Shyamalan’s more famous twists. However, I sort of feel like it relies on information that we weren’t exactly privy to.

Shyamalan has made some good and bad movies, and I think this falls under good. It’s not an intense movie, there are some good performances, and he does a good job making this thriller where the protagonist is the bad guy. On the other hand, it does have some hokey dialogue, though he is getting better at that, and overall, it’s a much tighter production. I will say, I think the whole thing left me feeling entertained by the end of it.

It’s not a great movie, in fact, out of all of the good Shyamalan movies, I think I would put this in fourth place, since if I was to compare it to The Visit, I think that was more entertaining than this. Still, it was a decent movie, and I would recommend going to see it in the cinemas if you can.