Trap (2024)
Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan
Premise: A father (Josh Hartnett) takes his daughter to a pop concert. The father is a serial killer and he discovers that law enforcement is planning to arrest him after the concert.
What Works: Trap is an M. Night Shyamalan production but it’s a bit different from the filmmaker’s other work. There is nothing supernatural about the story and Trap does not rely on pulling one over on the audience. It’s instead a clever movie with a novel premise. Borrowing an element from Alfred Hitchcock films like Rope and Psycho, the audience is put in the company of a killer and we’re to see if he can evade capture. The film has an edgy appeal that way. While we don’t necessarily want to see the killer actually hurt anyone, the filmmakers do engage us with the cat and mouse game so that the viewer will want to see how he might escape. In this regard, the film benefits from the casting of Josh Hartnett as the serial killer. Hartnett has a likable all-American-dad look but Hartnett plays the character with a forced civility that comes across creepy enough to hint at the violence underneath but outwardly affable enough to be disarming. The narrative structure is also quite interesting. The story plays out episodically but in a way that generally works. Hartnett’s character is the throughline and each portion of the story focuses on his interaction with his daughter, the popstar, and then his wife.
What Doesn’t: Trap constantly beggars belief. The premise itself is ridiculous; it supposes that law enforcement is working with a popstar to catch a serial killer at an arena concert. The police don’t know the killer’s identity and they randomly check all the adult men in attendance. Trap relies on a lot of coincidences and unlikely character choices. The father gets wise to law enforcement’s plan because a t-shirt vendor tells him everything; that same vendor takes Harnett’s character (who he’s just met) into restricted areas. The story goes off the rails in the last third of the movie. The compactness of the conceit is lost as the characters leave the arena and the film suffers from a few incredible revelations and several characters make inexplicable and stupid decisions. The story is artificially prolonged with multiple increasingly outlandish climaxes. It’s never enough to ruin the movie but the ending eschews the novelty of its premise.
Bottom Line: Trap is one of M. Night Shyamalan’s better films and certainly one of his most fun. It’s outlandish and too long but Trap is entertaining.
Episode: #1008 (August 11, 2024)