August 1, 2024
by Carla Hay
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
Culture Representation: Taking place in the Philadelphia area, the dramatic thriller “Trap” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some African Americans and Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A serial killer takes his daughter to a pop star’s arena concert and tries to evade law enforcement who have set a trap for him at the concert.
Culture Audience: “Trap” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan, star Josh Hartnett, and crime thrillers, but the movie has plot twists that are too ridiculous to take.
“Trap” is an apt title for yet another M. Night Shyamalan movie that traps viewers into a “bait and switch” plot that takes a disappointing detour into stupidity. This is not a horror movie. This is a half-baked thriller and nepotism project. That’s because Saleka Shyamalan (one of M. Night Shyamalan’s children) is in this movie which seems to be an excuse to try and launch her music career.
Saleka Shyamalan portays a Lady Gaga type of pop star named Lady Raven in “Trap.” Saleka Shyamalan does her own singing on the several generic pop songs that she co-wrote for the movie. In the production notes for “Trap,” M. Night Shyamalan says, “Although we set out to create Lady Raven, a fictional pop star, it started with letting Saleka write, produce and record an album.” Let’s just say that Saleka Shyamalan’s singing is better than her acting. She’s also in the movie a lot more than what’s shown in the “Trap” trailers.
M. Night Shyamalan wrote and directed “Trap,” which takes place in the Philadelphia area, his hometown area. Clips from the best scenes in “Trap” are in the movie’s trailers. A devoted husband and father named Cooper (played by Josh Hartnett), who works as a firefighter (although “Trap” never shows him at his firefighter job), has a secret life as a serial killer.
This murderer, who dismembers his victims, has the nickname the Butcher. He doesn’t seem to have a particular type of person he targets, but it’s revealed at one point in “Trap” that Cooper had an abusive mother, so he has “mother issues.” Cooper sometimes hallucinates seeing his mother (played by Marcia Bennett) in random places. She doesn’t really do anything in these visions, but seeing her still unnerves Cooper.
“Trap” begins by showing that Cooper has taken his teenage daughter Riley (played by Ariel Donoghue) to the fictional Tanaka Arena to see an afternoon concert by Lady Raven. Why is this concert being held in the afternoon? It’s hastily explained in the beginning of the movie that Lady Raven’s evening concert was sold out the night before, so she added an afternoon concert for the next day, due to popular demand.
While he’s at the concert, Cooper uses his phone’s webcam to secretly keep track of a young man named Spencer Gordon (played by Mark Bacolcol), who has been kidnapped by Cooper and is chained up in what looks like a basement or a garage. It’s implied that Cooper plans to kill Spencer later. At one point in the movie, it’s mentioned that the Butcher uses various houses to murder his victims. Later in the movie, Cooper explains how and why he has access to numerous houses.
Cooper notices that there’s an unusually large number of uniformed law enforcement officers at this concert (the “Trap” poster says 300 cops are on the scene), which makes Cooper very nervous. Inside the arena, Cooper soon finds out from a talkative merchandise vendor named Jamie (played by Jonathan Langdon) that law enforcement found out that the Butcher will be at this concert, so the entire concert is a trap for the Butcher. Somehow, the law enforcement officials plan to do surveillance on all the men who might fit the Butcher’s psychological profile.
As he does in all of his movies, M. Night Shyamalan has a cameo as an actor. In “Trap,” he portrays Lady Raven’s uncle/employee, who does a favor for manipulative Cooper, who tells a lie in order to get this favor. Cooper lies by saying Riley is recovering from leukemia. Considering that Cooper lies and steals to get security access from people who are working at the arena, it’s very easy to predict what he has in mind.
A psychological profiler named Dr. Josephine Grant (played by Hayley Mills) wanders around the arena and tells her law enforcement colleagues on walkie talkie what the Butcher is all about, what he probably looks like (a white male in his 30s or 40s), and what he is most likely to try to leave the arena undetected. And yet somehow, Dr. Grant can’t identify him as a person of interest when Cooper is standing right in front of her and is sometimes looking suspicious in several scenes. “Trap” also wants viewers to believe Cooper has extraordinary hearing abilities because he can somehow hear conversations that are several feet away in this crowded and noisy arena. Yes, the movie really is this idiotic.
“Trap” takes some tentative steps toward being a dark comedy, including an intentionally amusing cameo from Scott Mescudi (also known as rapper Kid Cudi), who portrays an androgynous hip-hop artist named The Listener making a guest appearance at this Lady Raven concert. Cooper also makes some wry comments that are supposed to bring some laughs to people watching this movie. However, the dark comedy in “Trap” doesn’t hit its full stride and ends up sidestepping that dark comedic tone to stumble around during the dull and dreary last 20 minutes of the film.
What does “Trap” get right? The concert scenes on stage are very accurate. The casting of Donoghue is also perfect, since she is the principal cast member who is the most authentic in her teenage role as bubbly but somewhat insecure Riley. (“Trap” has an extraneous subplot about Cooper trying to cheer up Riley, who was recently rejected by two former friends, who are both at the concert.) Alison Pill, who is too talented to be in this substandard movie, portrays Cooper’s wife Rachel in a thankless and limited role where she still excels.
Viewers of “Trap” who are familiar with law enforcement procedures will be cringing at all the things that “Trap” gets wrong. For example, law enforcement officials allow key witnesses to leave a major crime scene without questioning them. Cooper evades capture on at least one occasion because of what can only be described as the movie cheating in its film editing.
“Trap” is effective in building suspense only during the scenes that take place during the concert. But even then, this suspense is built with repetitive scenarios. Cooper tries several times to find ways out of the arena without being seen by police or arena security, but all he ends up doing is call more attention to himself to the police and security people on duty. In his role as Cooper, Harnett gives an often-smirking performance that seems to be leaning into the dark comedy, but it sometimes doesn’t land very well because the movie plays it too safe and never really shows Cooper to be a fearsome murderer.
Almost an hour into the 105-minute “Trap,” the movie takes a ludicrous turn and goes off the rails completely. It’s enough to say that this shift in the plot is because of what happens when certain characters leave the arena. “Trap” might’ve intended to have some dark comedy, but the movie is more memorable for its unintentional comedy because of how often “Trap” is laughably bad.
Warner Bros. Pictures will release “Trap” in U.S. cinemas on August 2, 2024.