‘Trap’ Review
It wasn’t that long ago that M. Night Shyamalan was a name that had started to deteriorate in value. A string of failures from Lady in the Water to The Happening to The Last Airbender and then After Earth pretty much made tacking on the writer-director’s name to a poster or trailer guarantee a particular type of groan. “What’s going to be the twist this time?” we’d all ask. While the director has not shied away from the expectation of twists - Split being the late-era Shyamalan film to embrace it fully by forging an entire universe - he’s also spent much of his time since his comeback with 2015’s The Visit making more straightforward genre exercises. The twists exist, but so does a filmmaker who understands that his films weren’t just popular for being surprising; they were popular for entertaining. And with his latest film, Trap, Shyamalan provides the best of both worlds with a twist-heavy thriller that keeps the audience guessing from the edge of their seat.
The marketing for the film, combined with the speed with which Shyamalan outs the conceit of it within the screenplay, is very reminiscent of 2021’s Old - a movie where the premise was so outlandish that it assured audiences they were in for a fun ride. And while there may not be a beach that makes anyone old in Trap, there is a pop concert ready to play host to an entertaining thriller and a series of traps that put its protagonist to the test. However, what’s most interesting about Shyamalan’s latest film is that its protagonist, Cooper (Josh Hartnett), is not a hero or an antihero - he’s a serial killer known as “The Butcher.” There’s something inherently fascinating about this because there is no one to root for in Trap, effectively eliminating the emotional appeal that a protagonist might be able to make to the audience. The moral gray area comes from his daughter, Riley (Ariel Donoghue), who drags her Dad to see Lady Raven (played by Shyamalan’s daughter, Saleka) in concert. It forces the audience to see Cooper as a serial killer and a father helping his daughter experience a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that she will never forget.
What awaits Cooper is an arena heavily guarded by police, SWAT, and FBI, who have determined that The Butcher will be at the concert that night. Armed with only the knowledge that he is there and will likely try to escape, Dr. Josephine Grant (Hayley Mills) spearheads an operation to catch The Butcher by finding out who he is and arresting him before the night's end. What plays out is Cooper's series of maneuvers to escape and the fun of guessing what he’ll do next as the walls close in on him. Shyamalan’s screenplay almost immediately reveals itself for what it is: a pulpy, nonsensical thriller reminiscent of the Hitman video games, where real-life logic is secondary to keeping the audience guessing. In that way, it’s not dissimilar from Kevin Smith’s 2011 film Red State, in which the writer-director took a detour from his grounded comedies to craft a thriller that aimed to zig whenever the audience expected a zag.
The entertainment value is that Shyamalan also knows how fun his initial concept is and knows he can play within that sandbox for a while before admiration gives way to repetition. The comparison to the Hitman video games is perhaps most apt because we know almost from the beginning that the person you are playing as will not be able to just walk out of the building. Cooper will need to improvise within the setting he’s driven himself within and play through different storylines to their logical conclusion before jumping ship to another. It’s a fascinating distillation of IO Interactive’s stealth-murder simulator, except the fun isn’t in the player improvising but in watching someone else dazzle the spectator with something completely unexpected.
Of course, this comes with some problems that can’t be avoided. Shyamalan’s screenplay creaks from all the twists it has up its sleeve, leaving its plot riddled with so many conveniences and suspensions of disbelief that you eventually have to stop caring because it’s clear Shyamalan just had a fun idea that he wrote his way through without much refining. That comes more in the editing room as Noëmi Preiswerk finetunes the pacing and turns a silly thriller into a tense and frantic escape. As is usually the case with Shyamalan’s works, it’s also a great-looking film filled with fascinating camerawork that captures the pop concert's pageantry and the cold, soulless corridors outside the auditorium. Working alongside frequent Luca Guadagnino collaborator Sayombhu Mukdeeprom (who has already outdone himself this year with the dizzying cinematography of Challengers), Trap conveys the intensity of its situation while also immersing the audience in the infectious energy of Lady Raven’s music.
That infectious energy is one of the elements that comes through strongly amidst all the kerfuffle of a serial killer trying to escape the police. Throughout Trap, a concert still has to go on unaffected by the manhunt staged within it. Shyamalan’s attention to that fact is endearing. It comes through in Donoghue’s performance and the music in the film, performed by Saleka (who also contributed music to Old and Shyamalan’s series, Servant). Mukdeeprom captures the auditorium's vastness and the ease Cooper can evade being detected in a sea of fathers and daughters. It’s in those moments where Cooper seems genuinely happy for his daughter’s happiness that Shyamalan conveys a universal appreciation for the communal experience of a concert. Much like the theatrical experience brings a sense of community, Shyamalan pulls out all the stops to demonstrate how pop music (and concerts in general) can bring unbridled joy through being a part of something with other fans. It also helps that the soundtrack is comprised mainly of moody and catchy earworms: the music equivalent of Trap’s balance of sinister characters in an absurd predicament.
Once Trap firmly goes off the rails, it has its hooks in the audience and pulls them towards the screen. Every step taken feels improvised to the point where it could all go south at any given moment, and while no one is rooting for The Butcher, there’s an insatiable desire to see if he escapes. Right from the film's beginning, Hartnett exudes this measured confidence that feels like it could spiral into chaos if pushed just right. The final act has every character walking on a razor’s edge, but it is most mesmerizing to witness Hartnett switch between a serial killer and a family man throughout the film, all while attempting to suppress the other as much as he can without giving either up completely. For all its plot holes and gaps in logic, Trap is still a confident cat-and-mouse thriller that demonstrates Shyamalan’s priority in his modern-day output: giving a one-of-a-kind experience to audiences that they will want to share with others.
