August 5, 2024 · Watch the official trailer
If genre filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan could totally pull off the premise of his latest film, it would be quite the thriller.
But unfortunately, only half (or perhaps even just a third) of his newest movie, “Trap,” genuinely works as well as he wants it to, leaving audiences with a haphazard, mildly successful event film for the laziest cinematic month of the year.
“Trap” stars Josh Hartnett as a father taking his teenage daughter to a pop rock concert only to encounter a heavy police presence as authorities seek to capture a well-known, elusive serial killer called The Butcher who was expected to be in attendance.
The best thing about “Trap” is perhaps a career-best turn for Hartnett, a seemingly A-list celebrity who never was able to fulfill the potential of his early career successes in films like “Pearl Harbor” and “Black Hawk Down.” His resurgence here is tremendous as Hartnett balances equal parts concerned parent and elusive killer with ease, flipping back and forth between personas at a drop of a hat with a cerebral, often chilling effect.
The mild affability that Hartnett is able to come across on screen makes it easy to understand why those Cooper comes into contact with would find him charming, yet easily forgettable, which allows him to slip undetected in and around the concert venue with ease. This really comes into play during several interactions with a fellow parent – and especially an unsuspecting merchandise vendor – that highlight Cooper’s social capacity to seduce potential victims.
Yet Shyamalan isn’t as bold as he thinks he is with the overall film and largely wastes the best acting in one of his films in quite some time.
For as good as Hartnett is with an overeager charm that’s equal parts top shelf girl-dad and borderline psychotic, the premise of “Trap” doesn’t fully materialize and by the second half of the film, Shyamalan has written himself into so many corners that the ever more elaborate twists, turns, and reveals that “Trap” makes become infinitely more contrived and do a greater disservice to the terrific character work Hartnett displays.
“Trap” is a film that doesn’t know what kind of movie it wants to be, from a serial killer thriller, a concert film, a daddy-daughter movie, or some combination therein. It’s a film that languishes in the conceptual stage rather than forming into something worthwhile.
And though it seems Shyamalan made the film to help propel his daughter’s music career, Saleka Shyamalan is actually a better actress in “Trap” than she is a musical performer as the film’s pop starlet Lady Raven. Her interactions with Hartnett are rich and compelling and the ability for the pair to be foils to each other in pivotal moments of the film is without a doubt the most gripping parts of “Trap.”
Cinematically, “Trap” veers all over the place from elongated wide shots of the concert meant to evoke “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” to the intense closeups and distinct color contrast that highlight Cooper’s psychosis, but the tonal inconsistencies of the film as it flails aimlessly in the back half keep “Trap” muted and unbalanced.
Shyamalan’s latest effort, unfortunately, falls flat based on what it could have been and without a terrific lead performance from Hartnett, “Trap” would be completely meaningless. Potential viewers could absolutely wait to catch this stilted thriller months from now on a streaming platform rather than heading to theaters.
Leave a Reply