I Declare it ‘Trap’ Summer

By Lindsay Traves | Film | August 5, 2024 |

By Lindsay Traves | Film | August 5, 2024 |

M. Night Shyamalan might be the guy known for twists, but maybe he should be more known for surprises. His latest, Trap, locks secret serial killer, Cooper (Josh Harnett), in a sprawling concert hall (shot partly at Toronto’s SkyDome!) and leaves him and his cool intellect to try to escape the throes of a ravenous police force and criminal profiler. If you saw the trailer, you might have thought the film’s big twist was spoiled, but Trap is not built around holding that card close to its chest. Trap’s premise is revealed at the top, the audience always in on the idea that Cooper is the prey in this massive hunt. But the surprises don’t end there; the movie has fun with battles of wits that run all the way to the end credits and maybe beyond.

Hartnett leads as Cooper, also known by outsiders as The Butcher, a mysterious psycho we don’t learn much about beyond the idea that he has a distinct 2000s serial-killer-thriller style of capturing and tormenting his victims. But he’s more than that; he’s also a father of a pre-teen daughter, Riley (Ariel Donoghue), and with that comes all of the tribulations and responsibilities of a good guy dad: protecting your daughter from social fallout and escorting her to the biggest pop concerts. Though he’s otherwise successfully kept his two lives separate, Cooper finds himself in a jam when he learns that the concert event is a ruse to catch The Butcher, whom authorities have an inkling will be in attendance.

Setting the event in a concert was a natural medium for Shyamalan to bring his daughter into the story. Saleka Shyamalan plays Lady Raven, a Taylor Swift-like popstar who commands the attention of crowds of screaming girls, Riley included. Saleka wrote, produced, and performed her own songs, but for all her lack of stage presence, she carries her own weight in her well-performed showdown with the killer. And while M. Night plays Lady Raven’s uncle, his connection to his daughter and his own fatherhood is ever present in this father-daughter story. Cooper struggles with keeping his lives, as a loving father and The Butcher, separate, fumbling when they begin to converge. It’s heartwarming to imagine Shyamalan using the grinning Cooper as a conduit to explore his relationship with one of his children as against that of a horror director (even with others joining the family business). Though Cooper is no Dexter Morgan, like similar cohorts, the movie leaves the audience cheering for the psycho-killer to succeed, all of which sells the tension and lets us root against the mass of blue.

I once posited that Shyamalan was a king of knowing comedy, a sentiment I don’t believe to be only my own. Shyamalan appears so aware of the sorts of nonsense he’s peddling, seemingly choosing fun over logic. So, of course it’s difficult to explain why a police force and the FBI would somehow manufacture droves of officers and resources to zero in on a stadium-sized concert to stop and frisk every one of the three thousand men in attendance based on a muddled list of vague descriptions, but who cares? It gets us a tall Josh Hartnett slipping into and toggling the dual roles of nice-guy-dad and resourceful psychopath towering over the clueless officers he systematically bests. With a family built around the supporting cast of the delicate fangirl Riley and doe-eyed cardigan-wearing Rachel (Allison Pill), Cooper (Hartnett) is propped up as a blend of the sunny dad and the bubbling killer. Hartnett is stellar at slipping into roles that change his mannerisms while owning his physicality, playing smoldering hero types and bumbling p***s the same. If he didn’t get “comeback” treatment for his underrated turns in Guy Ritchie’s flicks, then I’m happy to hand it to him now.

In a lot of ways, Trap is a better movie idea than it is a movie. The idea of using a massive concert with hard-to-control crowds and near countless exits in a place with unpredictable lighting schemes and difficult-to-manage sound makes for a delicious setting for a game of cat(s)-and-mouse. Unfortunately, Cooper’s wits are often traded in favor of luck, him trying and failing at slipping out the doors or past the guards. There’s only one major “whoa this guy is a creative psycho” moment and I wish there’d been more of that and less of “that was a freebie.” But for all of it, Shyamalan is leaning on Hartnett’s performance, one that will be remembered in his clip (as seen in one of the trailers) where he pushes casually through a cluster of tactical gear-wearing officers while smiling with a cup of coffee before quickly contorting his face into a raging smolder once its out of view. I don’t know how we got to Josh Hartnett shirtless brandishing a cleaver, but I am not asking any questions. The writer/ director knows the limits of his own premise and doesn’t maroon the audience for long, choosing to allow for the sort of surprise that gives the movie a compelling and unpredictable back half (even if it’s often silly and contrived). Shyamalan knows what he is doing, peppering his movie with weird conversations about pie and a long, blonde wig-wearing Scott Mescudi (who has more stage sauce than any of the movie’s pop stars could imagine) taking in Cooper with more than a wink.

So what do we make of the newest “M. Night Shyamalan Experience”? I say grab a snack, take in the theater air conditioning, and get ready to watch a generation’s horror heartthrob act his way out of a stadium.

Trap hit theaters August 2, 2024