Review: Trap

M. Night Shyamalan’s latest is reliably messy, fitfully fun.

M. Night Shyamalan has had quite the ride. For three to five years (depending on how you feel about The Village), he was heralded as the next Spielberg or Hitchcock. That run was so critically and financially successful that when Shyamalan stumbled, it was the career equivalent of falling off a mountain. Lady in the Water, The Happening, Last Airbender and After Earth were massive creative and financial failures that signified a director who burned bright before burning out, and Shyamalan’s very name in trailers elicited snickers from audiences. 

And then, Shyamalan mounted an improbable comeback, reinventing himself not as America’s next great director but as a scrappy, efficient B-movie auteur. I don’t like each of his post-Visit movies equally, but each has their pleasures and are less interested in Big Ideas than in spinning tense, scary yarns. Because he works cheap and puts up his own money – Shyamalan uses his home as collateral for each movie – he doesn’t have to take studio notes and can indulge his stylistic impulses. Sometimes, this works well – I think both Old and Knock at the Cabin are top-tier Shyamalan until their final 10 minutes – and sometimes you get Glass, where they drown Bruce Willis in a puddle. 

Trap sits firmly in the mid-tier of the director’s latest run. A thriller with a fantastic concept and solid lead performance, it contains some of Shyamalan’s most nimble and fun filmmaking. But the elements that work often do so despite the movie’s own silliness. Trap is a mess, but it’s a watchable and fun one, especially for its first hour. 

Josh Hartnett stars as Cooper, a doting dad who loves his daughter, Riley (Ariel Donoghue), so much that he’s willing to spend an afternoon at a pop concert. As the two take in the sights and sounds of Lady Raven (Saleka Shyamalan), Cooper can’t help but notice a heavy police presence. Cops surround all the exits and escort people from their seats. Cooper asks a merch vendor what’s up and is told that the entire concert is a trap; there’s a serial killer known as The Butcher who the cops know will be at the concert, and they’re determined to catch him. This highly concerns Cooper and rightly so: early in the movie, we learn that he’s The Butcher. 

It’s a great setup, and Hartnett has a blast as both the film’s protagonist and villain. He has an easygoing, goofy charm in the scenes where he tosses out dad jokes and bonds with his daughter, but he can switch on a dime to show the escalating panic as Cooper feels every eye on him and tries to think his way out. We learn that The Butcher/Cooper prides himself on keeping the two parts of his life separate, and Hartnett gives one of his best performances as a man who finds both identities colliding. As a metaphor for work-life balance, it’s intriguing, particularly considering that the popstar Cooper and Riley are there to see – who performs an entire concert in the background – is played by the director’s daughter. It’s not something Shyamalan delves too deeply into – it’s one of many ideas, like smartphone culture, teenage drama and marital suspicions that flit in and out of the film without being unpacked – but it’s in line with Shyamalan’s obsession with threats to the family unit, and it resonates with me as a father whose time with his kids is too often prone to distractions from work and other hobbies (which are arguably more wholesome than Cooper’s). 

Shyamalan’s script gives Cooper several excuses to leave Riley in her seat so he can try to better understand the security situation and gather information from arena employees. Much of this is fun to watch, as when Shyamalan injects humor into a conversation by letting a vendor casually hand a box cutter to Cooper while spilling details about the police situation. There are some fun feints and misdirects, and a tense sequence where Cooper makes use of a deep fryer and some jugs of canola oil to cause a distraction. Hartnett is charming enough that we believe he can ingratiate himself with the cops and employees, but it also helps his situation that Shyamalan has seemingly populated the arena with some of the most loose-lipped and gullible SWAT officers and security teams in Philadelphia. It becomes almost a running gag how easy it is for Cooper to stumble upon helpful tools or easily talk his way out of a situation, and while that’s often a good source for dark humor, I can’t help but wonder whether a stronger writer-director might have elevated this movie by pitting Cooper against a truly smart team or making his situation increasingly desperate. Too much of the movie reminds me of the Pitch Meetings running gag where the studio head remarks about how hard it will be to get a protagonist out of a situation only for the writer to reveal it will be “super easy, barely an inconvenience.” 

That said, the film’s first hour works as an enjoyable thriller, and it’s fun to watch Hartnett think his way out of the situation. The film keeps a balance between The Butcher’s need to get out of the arena and Cooper’s desire to give his daughter the best day ever, at one point figuring out a way to get closer to an exit and win Dad of the Year points in one swoop. And when Shyamalan sticks to the main concept, he creates a fun, if forgettable, B-movie. 

But the stadium plot loses steam after that first hour, and there’s a plot development that turns the back half of the film into a narrative and thematic mess. When the film leaves the concert, its pace grows sluggish and Shyamalan makes the attempt to introduce too many main characters and alternative protagonists. The film’s focus shifts from the father-daughter relationship and increases the importance of Lady Raven’s role in the story. Shaleka Shyamalan has a nice voice, but the concert scenes suggest that she’s missing the charisma and star power that, say, Taylor Swift or Beyoncé might bring (this is the level of popstar that Lady Raven is supposed to be). It’s not too bad when Lady Raven is in the background of the film, but stands out more when she becomes central to the film’s resolution. Allison Pill shows up as Cooper’s wife and gets a larger role in the film’s final sequences, and while Pill is a strong actor, it feels incorrect that the film’s resolution doesn’t involve Riley. 

The film becomes deeply chaotic in this back half, charging through a series of implausibilities and coincidences that drew titters in my theater. Its final 20 minutes is a parade of false endings and half-hearted reveals that never quite work, even as Hartnett remains fun to watch. Hayley Mills, while a welcome presence, is never properly integrated as the profiler on Cooper’s trail – although it’s funny casting to have her play the cop laying this particular parent trap – and the film’s attempts to explain Cooper’s psychology feel half-hearted. 

It’s probably worth bringing up Shyamalan’s weird style for capturing dialogue, something that’s been present throughout his career but has really stood out in this last decade. Shyamalan’s scripts are fond of clumsy exposition, often delivered as a character talks right at the camera. Shyamalan’s actors speak in an unnatural rhythm; it feels too earnest and too performative at the same time. For Trap’s first hour, that’s a feature, not a bug. The straight-on camera shots capture the feeling that all eyes are on Cooper and heighten his anxieties about the walls closing in, and Hartnett’s bizarre line readings convey the idea that Cooper is improvising and struggling to keep up his normal-guy façade (although when someone describes him as a natural liar late in the film, it feels disingenuous based on what we’ve seen). But when the action shifts to a suburban home and a conversation that takes place in a living room, Shyamalan’s directorial choices feel clumsy and messy. There’s a moment where five people are all talking to each other and the rhythm of the dialogue and the blocking in the moment suggest that none of them have ever interacted with another human before. 

Trap might benefit from a director who could draw out the suspense sequences to make a better, more claustrophobic movie. It might also be more fun if it was trashier, letting Hartnett indulge his killer impulses and leaning into the script’s absurdities to deliver some wilder moments. Then again, those things would probably stifle Shyamalan’s voice. And, for better or worse, this is truly his movie. And these days, you have to take the great concepts along with the mess. There’s no way not to. You’re kind of trapped.