Review: Trap (2024) — 3 Brothers Film

M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap is like if Fritz Lang made M mostly as a vehicle for his daughter, who he wanted to be Taylor Swift. I kid, but there’s more than a whiff of nepotism to Trap, which features Saleka Night Shyamalan as a mega pop star, called Lady Raven, whose Philadelphia concert (filmed conspicuously in Toronto at the Skydome) is the central location and set-piece of the film. Luckily, the elder Shyamalan is having a lot of fun too, as Trap is the kind of absurd but entertaining late summer thriller that we don’t get too much of anymore. Its internal logic breaks down, but since when is Shyamalan known for logic? Furthermore, unlike his most conspicuous failures, like The Last Airbender or The Happening, Trap has an obvious sense of humour—visually, conceptually, narratively. It’s minor Shyamalan, but it’s fun.

Josh Hartnett stars as Cooper, a father who takes his daughter, Riley (Ariel Donaghue), to a pop show by the superstar Lady Raven (Shyamalan). At first, Cooper’s awkwardness seems to be typical dad behaviour: he’s at a show he couldn't care less about, simply for the sake of his daughter, who’s a stan of the popstar of the moment. But we soon learn that Cooper’s apprehension about the evening—and about the inordinate number of cops in attendance—is for deeper, darker reasons. Cooper, in fact, is also a serial killer known as “The Butcher.” The cops, based on a lead coordinated by a veteran profiler (Hayley Mills, cast as a bit of meta humour, riffing on her famous dual role in The Parent Trap), are using the concert as an elaborate trap to catch him. And so we watch Cooper, our antihero, try to outsmart the cops and devise a way to escape the concert without either getting caught or revealing his alter ego to his daughter.

Trap is high concept, poppy, absurd, but oh so Shyamalan, and Hartnett is up to the challenge. Hartnett, who has seemed to return after a bit of a Hollywood lull as one of the supporting figures in last year’s Oppenheimer, plays here a low-rent Hannibal Lecter. He’s charming, he’s smart, and in some weirdly mundane ways, he’s relatable. In early moments, we watch him try to connect with his daughter. He asks about slang. He lamely refers to Lady Raven songs he hears all the time. He talks to the parent of a former friend of Riley’s with what seems like genuine concern over how his daughter has been hurt by the friend. That tension between what we learn about Cooper and what we’re seeing on the screen, as well as our own mistrust of what we’re seeing, provide the film with much of its tension. In a clever inversion, Shyamalan, who is so good at weaponizing off-screen space, no better than in Signs, weaponizes on-screen space to provide the tension. It just turns out that that space is mainly Josh Hartnett’s face as a dad who is both monster and normie.

Trap is a dad movie, at heart. It’s about a dad torn between his psychopathic urges and his genuine affection for his daughter. The humour is often corny, wth primo dad jokes throughout. And it’s made by a dad who wanted to show that his daughter has the goods, both dramatically and musically.

Speaking of the younger Shyamalan, she’s not bad. I’m no poptimist—sorry Swifties, but I think pop music peaked with Michael Jackson and it’s been all downhill from there—but Lady Raven’s music (written by Shyamalan herself) sounds credible, and she has a presence. In later scenes, she is forced into more dramatic moments than she’s capable of pulling off; it’s hard not to think of Francis Ford Coppola thrusting a young Sofia into The Godfather Part III, for better or worse. But like Sofia Coppola’s performance in that film, the result here is much better than the reputation.

As a Shyamalan thriller,Trap is also mostly successful. Shyamalan, a filmmaker so enamoured of Alfred Hitchcock, can weaponize the movie frame and a narrative’s rhetorical what-if’s like few others. The final third, with its many false endings, grows a bit ridiculous, even for Shyamalan, but the scenes at the concert keep you on edge, and that’s the majority of the film. Shyamalan, so known for the twists that define so many of his narratives, is smart to foreground his dramatic twist: that his protagonist is a serial killer. He allows our familiarity with that fact, as well as our ignorance of any of the specifics of his actions as a serial killer, to drive so much of the dramatic tension.

I’m also surprised by how much I enjoyed Hartnett in the role. I was never as high or as low on Hartnett as others during the various stages of his career. But I enjoyed seeing him in Oppenheimer, and revisiting movies such as Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998) have clued me into his appeal as a hunky leading man earlier in his career. Now, as Hartnett enters his middle-age period, he might lack the pathos of a Brendan Fraser, but he seems hungry to try new things and go for broke in his performances.

Hartnett is credible throughout Trap, which is essential to its success, as the movie is so fixed on his perspective for most of the runtime, relying on his face to lead us through the story. We watch Cooper think through the situation and try to hatch an escape from the concert; if we don’t enjoy watching Hartnett’s furrowed brow, the film won’t work. But it worked for me. I might be something of a Shyamalan apologist, even if I admit he’s made a handful of duds. But from The Visit onwards, he’s been more consistent, while still having fun with space and scenario and high concepts that few other filmmakers have the confidence to tackle. Trap is not among his standout works, but in a summer with few highlights, it’s a worthwhile 105 minute exercise in tension and release.

6 out of 10

Trap (2024, USA)

Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan; starring Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue, Saleka Night Shyamalan, Hayley Mills, Alison Pill.