Trap

Trap Review: M. Night Shyamalan’s Serial Killer Entry Delivers Chills and Thrills

Through trial-and-error spanning the better part of four decades, writer-director M. Night Shyamalan (Knocking at the Cabin, Old) seems to have found the sweet spot for career longevity, building a name brand synonymous with off-kilter premises, genre thrills delivered at predictably regular intervals, all delivered within tightly controlled budgets (usually self-financed). That formula has served him well for more than a decade, so there’s no reason why it can’t continue serving him, specifically his latest effort as writer-director, Trap. It’s a serial killer thriller structured around an irresistibly impossible absurd premise: A pop concert doubling as a trap for a serial killer/dad played by Josh Hartnett.

Hartnett’s part-time serial killer, and full-time dad, Cooper, finds himself at the aforementioned pop concert with his tween daughter, Riley (Ariel Donoghue). Headlined by pop superstar Lady Raven (Saleka Shyamalan), the concert represents everything a tween, pop music-loving girl like Riley could imagine: Floor seats to an impressively staged, heavily choreographed performance of Lady Raven’s biggest hits, all while tens of thousands of screaming tween girls like Riley and their parental figures look – and listen — on.

For some parental figures, a Lady Raven-style concert might seem like a nightmare, but for Cooper, it’s anything but. It’s a chance to both reward Riley for good grades and ease her unexpressed anguish after a recent skirmish with ex-friends-turned-mean-girls. In short, Cooper’s just being a good dad to the daughter who all but worships him for his strength, compassion, and cornball jokes. Except, of course, he’s more than just a suburban dad; he’s the notorious “Butcher,” a Philadelphia-based serial killer with 12 dismembered bodies to his media-penned nickname who’s managed to elude capture by local, state, and federal authorities.

How exactly law enforcement knows the Butcher will be at the concert, but knows nothing else about him isn’t clarified until much later in the film. By then, though, the increasingly ridiculous, logic-annihilating plot turns have made the premise the least of a moviegoer’s concerns, let alone the obligatory suspension of disbelief usually necessary. All that really matters is that Cooper, suddenly, painfully aware of a massive police presence in and around the concert venue, realizes he’s likely to be captured and must thus find a way out, hopefully without Riley or the authorities sussing out his second identity as the Butcher.

Still a skillful visual storyteller, Shyamalan uses every resource available, including the increasingly claustrophobic single setting, to masterful effect. Recognizing too that audience sympathies will naturally align with Cooper as the viewpoint character, Shyamalan plays the will he or won’t he get caught game incredibly well for most of Trap’s running time. It’s only when Shyamalan decides to take Cooper and with Cooper, Trap, outside the arena in the fourth and fifth acts that the film begins to lose momentum, all-too-often straining under increasingly implausible plot turns that will leave even the most generous Shyamalan fan frustrated.

For all of Trap’s minor missteps narrative-wise, Shyamalan instinctively understands the value of literally keeping the film centred on Hartnett’s Cooper, up to and including straight-to-camera compositions as Hartnett delivers Cooper’s subtext-laden dialogue, implicitly implicating the audience in Cooper’s increasingly desperate attempts to escape both the long and the short arm(s) of the law and its blue-uniformed representatives. As Cooper, Hartnett effortlessly segues between a nice-guy suburban dad and a terrifying serial killer eagerly awaiting the opportunity to dismember his next victim.

A longtime admirer of the original “master of suspense,” Alfred Hitchcock, and the latter’s humorously cheeky cameos in his own films, Shyamalan makes an onscreen appearance roughly halfway through the film. This time, he plays Lady Raven’s uncle and most likely, her greatest supporter, a deliberate reflection of Shyamalan giving his daughter, Saleka, a pivotal role in Trap. A“nepo-baby” by any definition, Saleka manages to acquit herself well, writing, singing, and performing multiple songs, each one surprisingly more hummable (and danceable) than the last. She’s slightly less assured when she’s asked to act opposite the more experienced Hartnett or Donoghue’s excitable super-fan, but that’s a minor quibble considering Trap doubles as a calling card/coming-out/sizzle reel for Saleka as a singer-performer.

Trap is in theatres nationwide now. 



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