Trap | 2024
JOSH HARTNETT as Cooper and ARIEL DONOGHUE as Riley in Warner Bros. Pictures’ crime drama thriller “TRAP,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release.
There are few mainstream filmmakers working today who have as keen an eye and a mastery of the cinematic language as M. Night Shyamalan. Sure, it became cool to poke fun at his work in the late 2000s when he became known as the "twist" guy, which left audiences expecting surprises and trying to outsmart his movies. Thankfully, it seems we have mostly moved past all that, and Shyamalan has smartly reframed expectations around his films since the soft reboot of his career in 2015's The Visit.
That may seem hyperbolic to some, but Shyamalan's formalism is quite rare in contemporary Hollywood. His instincts for how to move a camera recall Spielberg and even Hitchcock, so it is good to see Shyamalan finally getting the respect he has long deserved both from critics and audiences after falling out of favor in the years between Lady in the Water (2006) and The Visit.
Shyamalan's films do require a certain suspension of disbelief to fully tune into their wavelength. The scenarios don't always make real-world sense, but they nevertheless abide by an internal logic that allows the audience to buy into the mechanics of its scenario. His latest film, Trap, introduces us to Cooper, a seemingly normal father who is actually a prolific serial killer known as The Butcher. Cooper is taking his teenage daughter, Riley (Ariel Donoghue) out to a concert by mega-popstar, Lady Raven (Saleka Shyamalan). It soon becomes clear, however, that the entire concert has been turned into a trap designed to ensnare him by Dr. Josephine Grant (the wonderful Hayley Mills in her first big screen role in ages), a legendary FBI profiler determined to track him down. Armed with only his wits, Cooper must find a way out without alerting the authorities or arousing suspicion in his unsuspecting daughter.
HAYLEY MILLS as Dr. Josephine Grant in Warner Bros. Pictures’ crime drama thriller “TRAP,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release.
Trap is less a cat-and-mouse thriller and more of a rat-in-a-maze thriller - the twists and turns coming from the suspense of how Connor is going to get out of *this* one. This turns TRAP into one of Shyamalan's most playful films, getting great traction out of Josh Hartnett's inherent charm while slowly turning up the heat on him like a frog slowly boiling in a pot of water. Shyamalan cast his own daughter as Lady Raven, yet wisely only frames the concert through the view of our protagonists and their mediocre floor seats. Screens become incredibly important here; just as Connor watches his victim through a live feed on his phone, so too do the concert-goers further back engage with the popstar almost exclusively on giant screens or through the lenses on their own phones, recording an experience live they are still only experiencing through a screen.
Does it make much sense that the FBI would use a concern for a teen pop idol as a full-scale trap for one guy like this? Not really. None of that matters, really, because Shyamalan is so good at getting an audience to accept an outlandish scenario. It's a big, high-concept swing, and it works because Shyamalan plays it mostly straight, resulting in a slickly crafted, methodical thriller that showcases the best of the filmmaker's unique cinematic instincts. This is the kind of thing I think Shyamalan really excels at. While I found the religious philosophizing of Knock at the Cabin a bit wonky, Trap feels much more focused and effective, as funny and light on its feet as it is sharp and unnerving.
