A serial killer out on a daddy-daughter date at a concert becomes increasingly anxious when he discovers that thousands of cops have descended on the arena to trap him in Trap, a high-concept thriller that is both entertaining and incredibly fucking stupid.
M. Night Shyamalan is the ultimate hit-or-miss director, and despite him delivering some truly epic bad movies, I’m always hopeful that his next will be more like Split or The Visit instead of Old or Glass. So I entered his Trap with low expectations, high hopes, and a determination to not take the movie too seriously.
But boy does Shyamalan like to challenge me.
For a while, Trap is effective. Not amazing, not high-grade suspense, but effective. Shyamalan is just setting the stage, you tell yourself, as the concert gets underway, his real-life daughter Saleka slinks and sings on stage, and Josh Hartnett does his best to play a character who is supposed to be a good dad and simultaneously a sadistic killer dubbed The Butcher. The dynamic with his teen daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) works well, and it’s fun watching the machinations in Hartnett’s head play out.
But the whole thing is just so incredibly fucking stupid.
Even willing to suspend your disbelief, Trap is such a half-hearted attempt to make something good it’s mystifying that Shyamalan let this movie make it past the brainstorming phase. You can buy into the concept–a dad, who is also a serial killer, attempts to evade police at a crowded venue–even if it itself is a bit ridiculous. But Shyamalan takes so many illogical and idiotic plot turns, it’s really hard to take this movie as seriously as he clearly does. Without getting into spoilers, the killer’s repeated ability to escape police becomes sillier and sillier to the point it completely defies logic or reality, and then Shyamalan goes even further.
All that aside, what’s equally frustrating is how Shyamalan repeatedly loses focus on those around his killer. This is Hartnett’s movie, but the dynamic between him and his daughter is what makes the movie tick. Shyamalan doesn’t realize this. Donoghue inexplicably disappears from much of the second half of the film, and just when you’ve gotten used to her “replacement,” they too vanish from the climax.
Trap has its positives, but this feels like a movie where Shyamalan thought of a cool idea but didn’t take the time to actually think through how to make it work. It’s nice to see Hartnett back on the big screen, but the writing does him a disservice too. All in all, this is a piece of work where you not only need to check your brain at the door–you need to take a power drill and lobotomize yourself. And that’s just not worth it.
Review by Erik Samdahl unless otherwise indicated.
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