Released 2024. Director: M. Night Shyamalan
PITCHED BY ITS DIRECTOR AS “The Silence of the Lambs at a Taylor Swift concert”, Trap sounds intriguing, if only the movie lived up to its hook. It’s about a serial killer, and his identity is revealed pretty early on, so that’s not a surprise or a twist. There’s no killing or anything like that at the concert, certainly no cannibalism. And no matter how generous you feel, you couldn’t possibly describe what you see here as a scene from the Eras Tour.
Overstatement aside, Trap is one preposterous set-up after another, right up to the very end. The first original screenplay by M. Night Shyamalan since Glass (2019), Trap’s interesting (though not terribly exciting) plot of a serial killer evading capture at a stadium concert soon runs out of momentum for a variety of reasons.
Josh Harnett plays Cooper, who seems like a regular dad bringing his daughter Riley to attend a concert of her idol Lady Raven. They arrive, settle in and Cooper notices a heavy presence of the police and the FBI at the venue. Cooper checks his phone to make sure his latest captive is still locked up in the basement, revealing to the audience that Cooper ‘The Butcher’ is the target of this massive manhunt. Throughout the concert he plans his escape.
He chats with a credulous merchandise guy and steals his access card. He walks in on a SWAT briefing without anyone batting an eyelid and steals a police radio. He makes up a story about Riley having leukaemia to a concert staff (a cameo by the director) which gets her onstage and then backstage so they can slip out. All this time, as Cooper’s character is being established, it’s not clear if Shyamalan intends for us to side with the bad guy to cheer on his quick thinking, or want him caught and punished.
We don’t feel a sense of urgency to see him get away, nor do we feel justice needs to be served by his capture because as the lead character Cooper is so thinly sketched you don’t feel much invested in him.
His efforts to escape drag on without suspense, stuck in second gear. Although Shyamalan stages a real concert in a packed stadium with thousands of extras, the setting fails to create an immersive environment. The dim lighting, flashing lights and loud music, intercut with Lady Raven’s stage performance, should in theory generate a flurry of commotion, at least in the minds of the audience who are anticipating a serial killer to make some surprising moves. Instead, the concert scenes look, sound and feel too stagey, manufactured and choreographed to impart any realism. Shyamalan’s daughter Saleka wrote and performed all the songs featured and also played Lady Raven. Knowing this has probably tainted my perception that daddy is providing the aspirant pop performer a platform to boost her career at the expense of a tighter and rigorous edit in a suspense film. Cooper repeatedly running into the mother of one of Riley’s friends also serves little purpose but distracts.
The latitude that Shyamalan gives Cooper is beyond belief. I thought the Butcher has too many lucky breaks at the concert, but it gets worse. After he gets away by forcing Lady Raven to give them a ride home in her limo (to Riley’s utter delight and disbelief), Cooper’s lucky streak continues despite Lady Raven turning the table on him.
Contrivances pile on in quick succession. Instead of genuine twists or clever turns, they are cheap fixes that take the movie down a path of silliness. There’s a tunnel that connects to a neighbour’s house? Wow. Now that’s believable.
How did Cooper so quickly disguise as a limo driver and what happened to the real driver? How did he get out of the limo and slip away when it’s surrounded by hordes of fans blocking him? When did his wife Rachel poison the pie? When Rachel planted the concert ticket in the basement and alerted the FBI, did it occur to her she’s putting her daughter’s life in very real danger?
The ludicrous inconsistencies keep going right to the end. Cooper dismantling a bicycle spoke like a magician’s sleight of hand under the watchful eye of the FBI and SWAT team (and everyone else) is stretching it. To do it while handcuffed is, well, a whole new level. And after deploying the entire law enforcement to catch one of the most wanted criminals with a talent of slipping away, they put him at the back of a van alone, all by himself, unaccompanied. Really?
There are elements of a personality struggle in Cooper but Harnett isn’t able to convince us of the Jekyll and Hyde duality. Subscribing to the ‘Norman Bates’ syndrome by blaming it on his mother to explain Cooper’s behaviour is a shallow attempt at characterisation.
The holes and cracks in the plot prevent Trap from becoming a satisfying thriller. It's like Shyamalan doesn't even try to patch up and hope we don't see the glaring flaws.
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