M. Night Shyamalan’s new movie Trap, is out now: A pure distillation of the director’s impulses, even beyond the film’s twists. Our review
It must be tricky marketing a M. Night Shyamalan movie. Reveal too much in the initial trailer for a movie like Trap, and it hinders the audience’s experience of the film. Reveal too little, and there is no clear hook for said audience to even step into the theater. Then there’s the tightrope the director himself must walk in unfolding the story: Trap is about a serial killer named Cooper (Josh Hartnett), who goes to a pop music concert with his daughter, only to find out that the event is an elaborate — wait for it — trap to catch him.
This is all revealed in the trailer, and in the first 30 minutes of the film. In a different, perhaps better version of this movie, that early reveal would have been disastrous — undercutting the effectiveness of a major plot twist. As the film stands — a fun, but half-hearted execution of a killer concept that relies more on sentiment than suspense — it’s just a mild bummer to find out so soon.
Trap drops us in media res, with father and daughter on their way to a concert. The trap is already set, and the players are all in motion. Cooper walks into it, distracted by the excitement of his daughter and the duty he feels as a dad. Let me take this moment to say: The sooner you dispel any rational thought about how illogical a law enforcement plan-a-concert trap is, the better! As a film, Trap isn’t particularly interested in convincing the viewer how this might actually work logistically; it’s not really what Shyamalan’s movie is about, and though it’s sometimes distractingly bad, it is also at times delightfully comedic. Instead, at least initially, the focus usually stays tight: on Cooper, his relationship with daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue, the sentimental heart of the film), and how difficult it can be balancing serial killing with parenthood. The struggle!
Much of the film’s execution rests on Harnett’s capable shoulders. A former teen heartthrob who has had memorable recent turns in eclectic projects such as Penny Dreadful, Oppenheimer, and The Bear, Hartnett compels as both girl-dad firefighter Cooper and maniacally focused serial killer The Butcher.
