Trap

dir: M. Night Shyamalan

2024

We can’t, at this stage, pretend we don’t know what we’re in for by voluntarily choosing to watch a film by M. Night Shyamalan. He’s not the problem anymore – we are. People like me – people who hatewatch his films just to have something to complain about. Inadvertently, we create the thing we loathe by still making it look like he is a profitable director.

It’s a sickness, an addiction, if you will. So please understand that this review genuinely comes from a place of bad faith.

A dad called Cooper (Josh Hartnett) takes along his daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to a concert at a stadium. The pop star putting on the concert? Lady Raven (Saleka Night Shyamalan). Is she the Beyoncé / Taylor Swift of this world, which is always Philadelphia if it’s a Shyamalan movie, even though it was shot in Canada? Eh. She’s more a sub-tier Camila Cabello / Olivia Rodrigo, but without any songs anywhere near as catchy. For once in his life Shyamalan has done something more realistic, in that believing his daughter could play an international popstar would be unbelievable even for him.

The dad makes dad jokes, alternates between riling his daughter up and saying how great this will all be, and also trying to reassure her that her recent problems with school friends won’t matter in the scheme of things. And he also tries to get her snacks and merch and such, which is fine. You even sense that she would probably have preferred to have gone to the concert with those friends she’s on the outs with, but it’s still nice of her dad to have bought the tickets and come along with her.

A lot of dads would probably not want to subject themselves to something like this, or they’d be busy with something else, or they’d be too self-conscious to be seen at such a place with their teenage daughter. Not our hero here, Cooper. No, he lives to make his precious little princess happy.

He starts to notice that there are a lot of cops around, like A Lot. I guess since there have been terrorist attacks at big concerts, one of the worst of which was at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, it would make sense for there to be a heightened police presence at such public events. Good on you, loyal members of law enforcement, for wanting to make the public feel safe, and for safeguarding them from those who wish them ill.

Cooper notices a lot of details which imply maybe something unusual is afoot, but also takes some private time to look at his mobile phone, just to check on something.

Mobile phones. They really are the bane of our existence in terms of pulling us out of the moment, displacing us from the experiences right in front of us, casting us into either some imagined future state or distracting us with fluff. It means we disconnect from the people right next to us.

Thus far he seemed like Father of the Year, but once he starts looking at that phone, we know he’s just a mere mortal, just another Bad Dad like the rest of us.

Also, he’s a bad dad who is looking at some victim he’s trussed up somewhere, and who he can kill remotely, for some reason.

And, since the logic of most M. Night Shyamalan movies is derived from whatever schizophrenics can imagine is true, therefore it is true and believable, the entire concert is revealed to be a, you guessed it, trap to capture a serial killer who has been terrorising the neighbourhoods of Philly, which means he’s been killing white people. And that serial killer happens to be Cooper.

So. The hero we’ve been following around as he pushes people down stairs or implies like he might stab a motherfucker for barely any reason turns out to be a villain, the villain. But he’s our main character! Does that mean he’s an anti-hero? Do we want him to get away from the cops? Are we invested in such a manner?

It makes for a curious ambivalence, to make us want the guy to get away from the cops. He isn’t an innocent man wrongly accused. This isn’t The Fugitive.

But the cops are so, so dumb in this flick, it’s hard to side with them. And they are lead, improbably, by an FBI profiler called Dr Grant, but played by Hayley Mills. She wants to identify who the serial killer is, and she plans to do this, get this, just by looking at him.

Now, I’m not going to get into any sexist arguments about whether a ‘girl’ should be allowed to lead a force of thousands of agents and cops in their pursuit of a dreaded serial killer, or just how fucking stupid it is to ‘create’ a scenario that potentially puts so many lives at risk. But the primary issue is more of an ageist one – Dame Mills is pushing 80 – mandatory retirement age in the FBI is 57.

Highly dubious. But let’s face it, the only reason she’s there is because she starred in The Parent Trap all those years ago.

How’s that for a dad joke, stale and flat and inducing only of eye rolls?

That’s where Shyamalan is at, now. Taking dad jokes and the aesthetics of dad jokes and blowing them out to two hours length.

For a Shyamalan film, this is not as completely terrible as most of the things he’s ever done, and that’s saying something, though that’s grading on the Shyamalan curve, which is very generous, let’s say. That’s not to say that it’s well thought out or well paced or even capable of anything close to earth logic. But it’s funny seeing him try. I did think it stretched out way longer than it needed to, with the last half our being a waste of time and momentum, what little the flick could build up.

And there are way too many scenes where you think “who talks like this, who says things like this?” and then maybe shrug and think, “well, it is a dumb movie. Dumb things are bound to happen.”

As okay as Hartnett is, it’s strange that we want him somehow to get away with whatever atrocities he’s committed. The main and primary problem for him is not that he’s going to be captured – these cops and agents will capture Bigfoot before they catch this guy, who for no reason seems to be able to evade everyone at will as if he had superpowers. The real risk from his perspective is that the two worlds he’s tried to keep separate – decent husband, doting father, heroic firefighter, and guy who likes murdering random strangers, are at risk of colliding. For decades he’s kept the worlds separate. Oh, the duality of Man. What multitude of facets we can contain.

This might come as an absolute shock to you, but this is the tamest serial killer we’ve ever seen in our lives. The worst thing he does is push someone down some stairs. I mean, don’t get me wrong, that was pretty uncalled for, and I’ve seen enough cinematic violence to last a lifetime. But Shyamalan doesn’t have the stomach for anything, even as he apes as much as he can of what he thinks are the salient bits from Silence of the Lambs.

Even down to filming actors talking directly to camera. Well, firstly, you’re no Jonathan Demme, and secondly, this guy is no Hannibal Lecter.

Ugh. But when you remember that really this is a film where a father goes to extraordinary lengths in order to show his daughter how much he loves her, well, what dad could fault him for that?

Where this flick ends, with a big, broad shit eating grin on Cooper’s face as he outsmarts these dumb, dumb fucking cops yet again, in circumstances so unbelievable as to be fanciful, your final words on the topic, if they’re like mine, will be something like “please, gods, no sequel.”

This is not a just universe, however, so act accordingly.

5 times the worst actor in this is a Shyamalan, take your pick as to which one, out of 10

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“You know the Butcher? That freakin' nutjob that goes around just chopping people up? Well, the feds or whatever heard that he's gonna be here today, so they set up a trap for him. This whole concert? It's a trap. They're watching all the exits, checking everyone that leaves. There's no way to get out of here. It's kinda dope, right?” – no, it’s not kinda dope, not at all - Trap