TRAP

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: C+
Cinematography: B-
Editing: B-

I’ll say this much about M. Night Shyamalan: his movies are no longer the utter disasters they once were.

They’re still hardly masterpieces. And his latest trend seems to be to take a premise that has great potential, and then squander it, in a disappointingly muted way. He can’t even fail dramatically. This was the case with last year’s Knock at the Cabin, and it’s the case with Trap, in theaters this weekend.

There’s an unusually strange tension with Trap, where it’s difficult to tell whether it’s deliberately not taking itself seriously. It has moments of levity that are funny because it feels unintentional, and yet everything about it feels like it’s also by design. One of the most frustrating things about Shyamalan is how clearly intentional he is in every aspect of his filmmaking. But if he’s so meticulous, how could he write such jarringly contrived, forcefully stupid dialogue?

I’m plenty ready to lock into a movie, even a contrived one, if it works on its own terms. But Trap takes a great premise and then totally abandons it in its third act. We spend the first two thirds of a movie following Cooper (Josh Hartnett) and his daughter Riley (Ariel Donaghue) as they attend an arena pop concert, and Cooper learns early on that the entire concert is a trap set for “The Butcher,” a serial killer who dismembers his victims. The twist, which comes early on and was already spoiled in all of the marketing materials, is that Cooper is, himself, “The Butcher.” The first two acts focus on his attempts to figure out how to evade the trap.

Of course, the idea that any law enforcement agency would set up an entire arena concert with a pop superstar performer as a trap for a serial killer is bonkers-preposterous. So is the “profiler” Dr. Josephine Grant (Hayley Mills—of The Parent Trap fame—get it??), an objectively old lady who is somehow the leader of this entire scheme. How often do you see a white haired lady step out of a car with the iconic FBI letters on the back of her jacket, and then wonder whether she should be using a walker?

In any event, there’s a lot going on in Trap that stretches the limits of suspension of disbelief. Still, I found myself very engaged and entertained by this movie, even as it takes sudden turns into the idiotic. When Cooper realizes the trap has been set for him, he manages to get past security doors, and eventually even backstage, with mind boggling ease. When Cooper meets merch salesman Jamie (Jonathan Langdon) and asks him why there are police all over the arena, Jamie’s dialogue is filled with so much overtly obvious exposition it’s literally laughable.

And yet. Still. Entertaining! There’s something to be said for the performances here—including Jamie, but especially Ariel Donaghue as the daughter who is fangirling out and yet perceptive enough to clock that her dad is acting weird. And 46-year-old Josh Hartnett, as the villainous protagonist, is exceptionally well cast as a guy who acts like a dorky dad on the one hand, and a total psychopath on the other. Alison Pill gets a chance to shine a bit in the final act as Cooper’s wife, Rachel, but by then Trap has lost its steam.

I do have some respect for Trap in that it is almost entirely built on tension, really no violence ever seen onscreen, only the threat of it. There are guns in this movie, and a some of them are fired, but very minimally and in ways you don’t expect. The story even loops in Lady Raven, the pop singer character played by M. Night’s daughter Saleka Shyamalan as a fairly significant supporting character (one of the weaker performances, unfortunately—on the more impressive side, Saluki wrote and performed all of the songs herself).

And here’s the thing. All the comically forced dialogue notwithstanding, and the wildly telegraphed intension behind the camera movements, I’d have enjoyed Trap a lot more if the entire film had that one setting, in the concert arena. When key characters started actually making their way outside, I was convinced something would hold them up and force them back inside, so that the climax of the film would still take place in the concert venue. This live concert is the thing that sets Trap apart from other movies like it, about a cat and mouse game between law enforcement and criminal. Why Shyamalan completely abandons it for the film’s third act is truly a mystery.

They just . . . wind up at a house. This is where the “climax” takes place. Granted, there’s also a pop superstar there, so that gives it some novelty. It’s still far less interesting than a serial killer scheming in the middle of tens of thousands of fans—even if we’re supposed to believe the FBI is questioning every single man there before they leave the venue, and yet Cooper somehow manages to evade the cops the arena is crawling with at every turn. Have I mentioned not a single thing in this movie is remotely believable?

I just wish Shyamalan knew that a movie doesn’t have to be believable to work, but being earnest about it undercuts its effectiveness. It can be difficult to tell whether he’s earnest or being dopey for fun. Either way, Trap is dumb as hell and still entertaining for roughly two thirds of its 105-minute runtime. At least its length is reasonable. And it’s long enough for the wind to go out of its sails after the characters leave the venue, and well before we have a chance to.

Oh I guess this movie doesn’t star Ashton Kutcher.

Overall: B-