One goes into an M. Night Shyamalan film expecting a huge twist, and those either take our breath away (The Sixth Sense) or land with a thud (The Village). Shyamalan’s latest, Trap, a popcorny crime thriller designed for the summer blockbuster season, is a bit different. Shaking up the formula and giving away the big reveal in early promos, Shyamalan is at least trying something new to excite an audience accustomed to the familiar rhythms. But it’d be a lie to say this tactic works as it should, as Shyamalan struggles to navigate a plot too unwieldy for the single-location setting.
Trap has a terrific premise Shyamalan briefly wields with the sort of deft, light-on-its-feet thrills that it requires. Former teen heartthrob Josh Hartnett has aged to the point of Dad roles, playing Cooper, a firefighter and family man who has taken his daughter Riley (newcomer Ariel Donoghue) to a concert in Philly. The headliner is Riley’s absolutely favorite artist, the fictional Lady Raven (played by Shyamalan’s real-life daughter and R&B star Saleka), who she adores with the fanaticism of a Swiftie on steroids.
But before long Cooper finds out from a mouthy concessions dude that the concert, and the increased police presence inside, are all a trap to capture “The Butcher”, a serial killer who has been terrorizing the city for years. It’s truly unfortunate that we already know Cooper is the killer because Shyamalan could’ve done some fun things with the duality of his life as an embarrassingly awkward middle-aged father and a serial killer with a high body count. We see a little bit of it, as Cooper has to keep coming up with excuses to leave Riley in her seat as he snoops around the venue looking for a way out of this puzzle. But there’s an experienced profiler (Hayley Mills) hanging around cutting him off at every turn.
Shymalan struggles to keep things interesting for a movie with only a 105-minute runtime. Cooper lays it on thick with everyone he encounters to try and throw them off the scent. He charms his way into access badges, free concert t-shirts, and even sneaks past a literal mob of SWAT agents (seriously, Philly’s police force is the crap the way this guy gets around) just to offer them coffee and doughnuts, but the sillier Cooper’s actions get, the less we take the threat of him seriously. Saleka composed a dozen new songs for the film and we get to hear virtually all of them performed wit her on stage, and while she’s extremely talented it’s also a distraction that breaks up the film’s momentum.
Trap shifts like a chameleon into an altogether different film in the final act, and the less said about that the better. This is still something you want to go into knowing as little as possible. Shymalan finds his groove as the net tightens around Cooper, his daughter Riley beginning to realize that something isn’t quite right, and even Saleka gets in on the action. It’s still ridiculous the leaps in logic and there’s a lot of exposition, but Shyamalan finally heightens the danger and adds real emotional stakes that will have you reevaluating Cooper and the people caught in his web.
What’s undeniable is that Hartnett is amazing at embodying Cooper who is clearly psychologically damaged in many ways. He shifts rapidly from caring Dad just wanting his daughter to have the night of her life, to a scheming psychopath willing to injure innocents to save his own skin. Only occasionally do the two halves of Cooper’s personality clash, like when an annoying mom whose daughter hurt Riley gets in his face, you can see him grappling with how far he should escalate things. Meanwhile, we feel that Cooper is genuinely scared of Riley finding out who he truly is, not for himself but to spare her the trauma.
Trap very nearly pulls off the Hitchockian thriller that Shyamalan was aiming for. But other than Hartnett’s twisted performance and a wicked final act, it’s too unfocused and clumsy to hit the high standards that Shyamalan has set recently.
Warner Bros. opens Trap in theaters on August 2nd.
