Trap (2024) review

Dir. M. Night Shyamalan

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★★

Among increasingly heightened political turmoil, wildly unpredictable weather across the country, and a couple really audacious genre gems, this has also been the summer of the Shyamalan dynasty. Following the debut of Ishana Night Shyamalan (The Watchers) comes her father’s latest, Trap, which posits his eldest daughter, Saleka, as a pop star waiting for a breakout hit. Not since Brian Ferentz inexplicably got a job with the Iowa Hawkeyes has there been such a brazen example of nepotism.

Delicately balancing delightful humor and appropriate tension, Trap has patriarch M. Night playing in a sandbox full of ideas that see most fleshed-out to effective measure. Of course, we as viewers are conditioned to wait for an inevitable twist that will turn the film on its head. However, similar to his last feature, Knock at the Cabin, Shyamalan doesn’t risk blowing a crater into a top-tier concept; one he fittingly billed as “Silence of the Lambs at a Taylor Swift concert.”

We follow a serial killer father named Cooper (Josh Hartnett) and his daughter, Riley (Ariel Donoghue), who arrive at a Philadelphia convention center to watch Riley’s favorite singer, Lady Raven (Saleka), perform a concert. Unbeknownst to Cooper until their tickets have been scanned, the concert has been populated with a massive amount of security, police officers, and FBI agents intent on catching “The Butcher,” a vicious killer who has been at large for most of the decade.

How did the authorities know Cooper would be there? That’s one of many little details that’s revealed overtime, as Cooper recognizes the sheer volume of police personnel on-scene and grapples with the fact that there might not be an easy escape. The venue is obviously swarming with people, and as soon as Lady Raven takes the stage, the engulfing sounds of thumping pop synths and screaming teen girls, paired with inconsistent lighting, further contributes to our lead’s anxieties. Dad conjures up any excuse he can to breakaway from his daughter and assess the convention center, even if it means pestering a friendly worker at a merch stand (Jonathan Langdon) for intel.

Trap belongs to Josh Hartnett, who delivers a cunning, cagey performance that sees him playing the primary villain for the first time in his career. Hartnett’s deceptively challenging role requires him to be a doting, cringey father when in the company of his daughter, and a sneakily persuasive concertgoer when interacting with others. Hartnett masters an array of eerie smiles and varying vocal tones to convey the sociopathy of his character. His Cooper is such a maniacal guy that I found myself wanting to see the R-rated version of this movie to see the terrible things he did to his victims play out, if for no other reason than to see the murderous side of him that we never fully grasp.

Enough of Saleka’s pop/R&B music is highlighted to give you a flavor of the mood she conveys as an artist. Paradoxically, however, the only cinematographical misstep the otherwise terrific Sayombhu Mukdeeprom (Challengers) makes is lingering too intensely on the video-screens of the concert as opposed to Saleka’s actual performance. Her songs — which comprise the film’s soundtrack, LADY RAVEN — work overtime to match the mood of scenes in diegetic fashion, but it’s Saleka’s stage presence that feels undermined in the process.

Helping Trap is that Shyamalan treats the viewer like he does Cooper. He metaphorically backs us into a corner, making us active observers in our surroundings as we’re treated to various spaces of a concert: the floor, backstage, the basement, and the crowded concourse. The feelings of entrapment does in part dissolve when Shyamalan exits the concert — in broad daylight no less, was this concert held at 2pm? — and spends the late second act and all of the third act in a barrage of different locations. This is the time to make Saleka more than a singer, but also an actress. Thankfully, her first showing is a strong one.

By contrast, Trap is Shyamalan’s 16th film, and his talents continue to evolve. After seeing Old, I lamented about how Shyamalan’s reputation for twist endings/climaxes has effectively made viewers aware that it was only a matter of time before the rug was to be pulled out from under them. Shyamalan’s last two features have shown their abilities to operate on their own engaging premises, with no significant twist calling into question everything we’ve seen up to its reveal. I call it a maturation process. I much prefer emerging from a film with a handful of nitpicks as opposed to a barrage of skeptical assertions thanks to a shoddy, underdeveloped third act. And if this film proves to be the start of his new Unbreakable series, sign me up.

Starring: Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue, Saleka, Hayley Mills, Alison Pill, Jonathan Langdon, Kid Cudi, and M. Night Shyamalan. Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan.