Film Review: Trap

Trap
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Blinding Edge Pictures
In Theaters: 08.02

It was 20 summers ago that I sat in a darkened theater to catch a midnight screening of writer-director M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village, and felt bewildered and insulted by the ludicrously contrived, nonsensical twists that were meant to be mind-blowing, but were merely asinine. The film was a pivotal moment in the filmmaker’s career, as critics and audiences were faced with the truth that the Emperor had no clothes. And two decades later, with the release of Trap, Shyamalan is going streaking again, and what he’s showing off is hardly impressive.

In Philadelphia, ordinary father Cooper Adams (Josh Hartnett, Pearl Harbor, Oppenheimer),  rewards his teenage daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue, Blueback) for getting good grades by taking her to a concert to see her favorite pop star, Lady Raven (Saleka Shyamalan, M. Night’s daughter). Riley fears that Cooper will embarrass her, though as it turns out, his dad jokes and squareness are not his worst attributes. He’s actually a notorious serial killer known as “The Butcher,” and when he notices an inordinate police presence at the concert, he asks a friendly T-shirt vendor, Jamie (Jonathan Langdon, Run The Burbs), what’s going on. Jamie confides in him that the FBI  has learned The Butcher is attending the concert, and they intend to trap him. Cooper steals a radio to listen in as a criminal psychologist and master profiler, Dr. Josephine Grant (Hayley Mills, The Parent Trap, Pollyanna), anticipates The Butcher’s every move (apart from talking to the T-shirt vendor who was so wisely kept abreast of her plan). The concert becomes a deadly game of cat and mouse, with Cooper trying to stay one step ahead of her machinations, juggling the urge to make sure that Riley has a good time with the task of getting out the building without getting caught and sent to prison.

Trap serves as the ultimate example of why M. Night Shyamalan is my least favorite writer-director, as no one else in Hollywood makes me repeatedly sit through films that so actively say, “I think you’re stupid and I’m clever. Love me for it!” The plot holes and far-fetched lapses in logic that start with the very informed vendor keep getting more labored and outrageous with each passing moment, and include highlights such as Cooper just happening to find Lady Raven’s uncle (played by M. Night) in the crowd and talking his way into getting himself and Riley backstage, and Grant apparently giving Lady Raven a crash course in criminal psychology. As it’s mentioned that Grant gave a presentation to everyone working at the venue that morning—possibly having asked each of them personally, “are you The Butcher?” and taking them at their word when they said no and calling that good – and I imagine the training consisting primarily of Grant saying the following: “I’m now going to play a clip for all of you from the movie Red Dragon, and I want you to pay close attention to the technique employed by Edward Norton’s character to throw the killer off his rhythm. If you run into The Butcher, be prepared to use it. Twice.” There’s also a recurring theme here, in that Cooper isn’t the only dutiful dad trying to indulge his daughter while committing atrocities, as the whole movie feels like a rather labored ruse to give Saleka her own concert film. 

Hartnett is having something of career resurgence, though his hammy yet simultaneously dull performance is a wasted opportunity to further his comeback. He comes off a lot let less like the blue-collar Hannibal Lecter that M. Night seems to be going for, and more like he’s in a Halloween episode of The Simpsons where it’s revealed that Homer and Sideshow Bob are somehow the same person. Still, Hartnett fares better than Saleka Shyamalan, who proves herself to be a solid singer, a mediocre songwriter and a thoroughly wretched actress. Alison Pill (Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Star Trek: Picard) tries gallantly as Cooper’s wife Rachel, though she’s given so many guffaw inducing moments that it may be a bigger public embarrassment than when she accidentally tweeted topless photos of herself in 2012. While it’s a joy to see Mills on screen again, Dr. Grant ranks among the top ten stupidest geniuses in motion picture history, and she’s only here because the writer-director is making a very forced in-joke out of the fact that the movie is about a “Parent” caught in a “Trap” orchestrated by Hayley Mills. 

Trap is impossible to take seriously on any level, and despite its 105-minute runtime, it seems to go on forever. The only things mitigating its status as the worst movie of 2024 is that it provides more side-splitting hilarity, albeit unintentional, than any 10 comedies released over the past seven months put together. It’s an unmitigated disaster from start to finish that is fit only for Shyamalan apologists, and if you insist on seeing a terrible movie this weekend, the abysmal Harold and The Purple Crayon manages to be the slightly better choice. –Patrick Gibbs 

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