TRAP (2024) - Movie Review

Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Starring: Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue, Saleka Night Shyamalan, Hayley Mills, Alison Pill
Genre: Thriller, Horror, Mystery
Writer: M. Night Shyamalan
Runtime: 105 min
Rated: PG-13 for some violent content and brief strong language
Buy This Movie: Blu-ray (Amazon), DVD (Amazon), 4K Ultra HD (Amazon),Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV

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Synopsis:

A father and teen daughter attend a pop concert, where they realize they're at the center of a dark and sinister event.

Review:

M. Night Shyamalan's career is filled with ups and downs. For every "Sixth Sense", "Unbreakable", "Signs" or "Split", we also get movies like "Lady in the Water", "The Happening", "The Last Airbender" or "After Earth". Billed as a one-trick pony, Shyamalan has been trying in recent years to diversify his creative output, but while he still seems to have a lot of interesting ideas, he's what I would call an uneven filmmaker. Whenever he makes a new movie, you'll find yourself intrigued by the premise, but the viewing experience as a whole will be a coin toss.

The movie's basic set up is fairly original. A dad and his daughter go to fictional pop star Lady Raven's concert. Said dad turns out to be a serial killer (revealed to the audience in the first 10 minutes), and the concert is an elaborate trap set by the police and FBI to capture the maniac. For pretty much the first hour, we join Josh Hartnett's Cooper, a firefighter who moonlights as a brutal murderer known as The Butcher, in his efforts to escape the trap while maintaining his identity a secret. That's the movie's best part, watching Cooper navigate the suspenseful cat-and-mouse game within the confines of the concert venue.

There are plenty of moments that come close to breaking even the most strong-willed suspension of disbelief, but Shyamalan has a knack for suspense-building, and for a whole hour he lays out plenty of tasty Hitchcockian thrills to enjoy. Unfortunately, after that the movie starts to meander, plowing through plot convenience after plot convenience, and my interest began to dwindle as Shyamalan seemed completely disinterested in maintaining a semblance of believability. Thankfully, Hartnett is a constant throughout the movie, elevating every scene he's in with a gleefully insidious performance. He's really having fun with the character and the sublte moments when the monster within breaks through his carefuly constructed human mask are fantastic.

Shyamalan's own daughter, Saleka Shyamalan, plays the pop star, Lady Raven, and the film contains an entire album's worth of songs, which have been released as a studio LP titled "Lady Raven", separate from the official score soundtrack. The songs were apparently written in close relation to the script, and supposedly match what is happening onscreen. There appears to be a broader musical theme at play here, however, the general impression is that the film was mostly designed to promote Saleka's musical career and get her a backdoor album release. Furthermore, Saleka's character becomes an important player in the story's second half, which at first glance is a bit confusing.

In her defense, she can sing and has a convincing stage presence, and while she's not an experienced actress, she doesn't botch the job. I got the feeling that there's an intentional antithesis between Cooper's pure evil and Lady Raven, who is depicted as a decent person who genuinely cares about people and uses her music as an instrument for good. The hints at a duel between good and evil gave me "Unbreakable" vibes. Sadly, whatever Shyamalan may have intended to do with this particular sublot, it's certainly not as effective or as coherent as it should have been.

"Trap" is another one of Shyamalan's mixed-bag experiences, but one I will admit I enjoyed a lot more than his last two films, "Knock at the Cabin" and "Old". However, I have to warn you, this is the kind of movie that you need to watch with your brain turned all the way off for the duration. You make take issue with Shyamalan's bending of logic and realism, but Hartnett's performance alone is worth seeing this movie for.

SCORE: 6.5/10