Trap review – clas­sic Shya­malan, hold the twist

Much of M Night Shyamalan’s fil­mog­ra­phy focus­es on the super­nat­ur­al and exte­ri­or threats which his pro­tag­o­nists must face sto­ical­ly, but in a hand­ful of his fea­tures, humans are the true dan­ger, unique in our capac­i­ty for cru­el­ty and vio­lence toward one anoth­er. Tak­ing this one step fur­ther, the pro­tag­o­nist of of his lat­est film is also its antag­o­nist – hand­some, dorky dad Coop­er Adams (Josh Hart­nett) who arrives at a pop con­cert with his tween daugh­ter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) only to dis­cov­er the whole event is an elab­o­rate sting oper­a­tion. And he’s the target.

See, when Coop­er isn’t play­ing house with his fam­i­ly or work­ing at the Philadel­phia Fire Depart­ment, he’s chop­ping up locals as ser­i­al killer The Butch­er, rack­ing up 12 con­firmed vic­tims with anoth­er poten­tial cur­rent­ly chained up in his base­ment (this was revealed in the trail­er, negat­ing the usu­al ​“twist” that audi­ences have come to expect from the film­mak­er). The king of com­part­men­tal­i­sa­tion, Coop­er isn’t kee on his two worlds clash­ing in such a vio­lent fash­ion and starts try­ing to work out how he can evade crim­i­nal pro­fil­er Jose­phie Grant (Hay­ley Mills) with­out blow­ing his cov­er or ruin­ing the con­cert for his excit­ed daugh­ter, who’s already hav­ing a tough time at school with­out the bag­gage of a ser­i­al killer father to con­tend with.

For the first 45 min­utes, Coop­er attempts to gain the upper hand through var­i­ous acts of sub­terfuge, util­is­ing his charm and author­i­ta­tive pres­ence to gain access to restrict­ed areas, lying through his teeth and at one point mor­tal­ly wound­ing a ser­vice work­er. Despite the excel­lent set-up of a con­cert as a pow­der keg, this isn’t real­ly utilised as well as it could be, and ulti­mate­ly leads into a more con­ven­tion­al third act which moves away from the intrigu­ing set­ting. Cooper’s job as an emer­gency ser­vices work­er could be bet­ter inte­grat­ed to demon­strate the social com­pli­ance phe­nom­e­non, and while there are ges­tures at a trau­mat­ic child­hood, there isn’t much giv­en in the way of moti­va­tion for his method­i­cal mur­der spree. As it stands, Coop­er doesn’t real­ly face much in the way of chal­lenges until he comes up against his daughter’s idol, the pop star Lady Raven (Sale­ka Night Shyamalan).

If the plot leaves some­thing to be desired, the cast­ing of Hart­nett is Trap’s great­est feat – it’s been too long since we saw him in a decent lead­ing role (though he was excel­lent in his small Oppen­heimer role) and he excels as both goofy dad try­ing to bond with his daugh­ter and cold-blood­ed killer who knows all the right moves and isn’t going down with­out a fight. Shyamalan’s daugh­ter Sale­ka also fends off nepo­tism com­plaints as a cred­i­ble pop singer (she wrote and per­formed all her own music) while Kid Cudi has a fun cameo as one of her collaborators.

Cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Say­omb­hu Mukdeep­rom (best known for his work with Apichat­pong Weerasethkul and Luca Guadagni­noo) also puts in a fine show­ing – it’s not easy to cap­ture the chaos and spec­ta­cle of a pop con­cert – and there’s plen­ty to admire about the tech­ni­cal craft of the film, demon­strat­ing Shyamalan’s con­tin­ued enthu­si­asm for cin­e­ma and appre­ci­a­tion for his work. Although he’s no stranger to IP-based films (his last two were adap­ta­tions) Trap is a reminder that Shya­malan is one of the few A‑List direc­tors who still seems ded­i­cat­ed to orig­i­nal sto­ry­telling, and even when the scripts don’t quite ful­ly deliv­er on their elab­o­rate premis­es, his knack for cre­at­ing inter­est­ing char­ac­ters and cast­ing the right actors to play them picks up the slack.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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