Why did the serial killer enjoy his time at the concert? Because there was a wall of death during one of the songs, of course. Dad jokes are hitting you 200 miles a minute as a new contender for this year's number one Dad Film™ enters the ring in the form of Trap, which is writer-director M. Night Shyamalan's new thriller comedy. Our dad of the year contender is Cooper (Josh Hartnett), a Philadelphian firefighter who with his 12-year-old daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) is attending a concert of her favourite pop artist Lady Raven (Saleka Night Shyamalan) at a local arena. Everyone's excited until Cooper learns that the arena's unusually heavy law enforcement presence is due to a sting operation for catching a prolific serial killer, nicknamed "The Butcher". This is a problem for Cooper since he indeed is The Butcher, therefore he needs to figure out how to get out without getting caught.
With this particular setup, M. Night Shyamalan has managed to get all the right elements for an incredibly exhilarating show, balancing the personal battle of intelligence between Cooper and the feds with the absurd scale of the operation that you can mine a lot of entertainment out of. As far as the absurdity and humour—whether that's dad jokes, Hartnett's exaggerated facial expressions captured by cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom in intense closeups or all the silly escape manoeuvres—Shyamalan gets it mostly right. Those familiar with the filmmaker's straightforward thrillers might at first wonder if it's intentional but the last two scenes (Cooper's final move and a mid-credit scene) should clear things up for you if you're still not convinced.
But the fun of it all can only get you so far as Shyamalan is unexpectedly careless with elements that are there to support the spectacle, thriller genre and the film's story as a whole. We only get 15 minutes into the movie and somehow the immersion has completely vaporised because it seems like the director hasn't done any homework on big concerts and people attending them, which would then drive the storytelling. This type of ''great idea, uneven execution" is normally attributed to first-time filmmakers and not to established creative voices who have been working for decades on a high level.
Amateurish decisions that often lead to plot conveniences keep mounting up: rapid fans willing to roam the halls during Lady Raven's show, extras who aren't interacting with it believably (although it's nice to see a lot of real people in a modern movie), dialogue during songs, live streams, limousines and Hayley Mills' outing as FBI profiler/professional awkward-exposition-dumper Josephine Grant. As a result, the ambience isn't present at all. Shyamalan's staging of events and Noëmi Preiswerk's editing are also disorientating since it's hard to keep track of where Cooper and others are at any given moment, further taking you out of this experience that is supposed to be fun and captivating.
One thing that Trap gets right is people watching the show more on their phones than being in the moment and it flirts with the idea of vapid pop music (aside from the tracks 'Release' and 'Dead End'), terrible mumble rap features and vocal backtracks meant to played mindlessly in the background while a real life-or-death situation is happening, until it becomes unironic in the second half when Shyamalan stages a music video for his daughter as she performs a "live" acoustic performance with tuned studio vocals. It also doesn't help that Saleka Night Shyamalan is giving an out of tune and "out of tone" performance when Lady Raven becomes a bigger part of the film's escalating stakes, made very apparent when matched with a scenery-chewing Hartnett who's finely balancing Cooper's goofy charm and pure evil in his eyes, or with Donoghue who has a sparkly presence and an actual personality.
It's utterly bizarre to witness an experienced filmmaker like M. Night Shyamalan conducting his movie like a rookie and expecting us to buy into it. If any movie released in the last decade called for a redo, it would be this one. Blatant mistakes are simply so aplenty, from the lack of finesse, perspective and research that would make the walls around Cooper close in with more ferocity and skill than what we see here. Unless the mission was just to be a good dad and disregard everything else, outside of its comedic framework, Trap fails to hit the correct notes.
Smileys: Premise, humour
Frowneys: Directing, editing, Saleka Night Shyamalan
Hey, that Bubba And Carson's employee is extra fried!
2.0/5
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