You do n’t go to an M. Night Shyamalan movie expecting airtight logical system . Who really cares why alien with an allergy to H2O would invade a satellite covered in water ? And if you ca n’t get past what would happen if a woodworking plane take flight over a community block in time , you ’re go to have a rough go with hismost gorgeous parable . But there ’s pause of incredulity , and then there ’s what Shyamalan asks of his consultation with his new moving-picture show , Trap . This patently ridiculous thriller does n’t just strain credulity , it strangle it , wraps it in charge card , and leaves it rot in a dumpster . There ’s scarcely a single plausible moment in the entire picture show . Whether you could range with that will depend on how much juice you think it manages to squeeze from its pulp premise .
On paper , Trapis very juicy indeed . The plot revolves around Cooper Adams ( Josh Harnett ) , a midway - aged firefighter who takes his teenaged daughter , Riley ( Ariel Donoghue ) , to see her preferred artist , a pop star named Lady Raven . Speaking of clutch pop moves , Raven is played by the film producer ’s daughter , veridical - lifetime singer Saleka Shyamalan , and the plastic film grind to a stay several times throughout to simply watch her do her sultry mid - tempo anthems , the camera itself almost beaming with pride . M. Night may never win an Oscar , but between this and latterly producing the featuredirectorial debut of hisotherdaughter , he ’s definitely got a shot at the prize for Father of the Year .
The writer - director ofThe Sixth Sensemade a name for himself springing big twists in the closing minutes of his soulful multiplex knuckle - whiteners . Here , though , he lays most of his circuit card on the table upfront , privilege suspense over surprise . As an implausibly loose - lipped merch trafficker lets slip to Cooper , the police have targeted Raven ’s concert for an elaborated sting operation . They have reasonableness to believe that one of the 20,000 people in attending is The Butcher , a serial killer whale stalk Philadelphia who leaves people chopped up in little objet d’art .
The police are right . The killeristhere . He ’s none other than Cooper , who we ’ve just seen cabbage off to the restroom to check in on surveillance footage of his latest victim , who is chain to a pipe in a basement . If nothing else , Trapis deserving look for how deviously it cast Harnett against type . Shyamalan subverts his star exponent double over — first by making the one - clip adolescent heartthrob ofThe Virgin SuicidesandThe Facultylook deeply unhip , then by twitch his dorkiness into malevolence with the reveal of what Cooper does when his family and carbon monoxide - workers are n’t watch . It ’s a ghoulishly entertaining public presentation , with Harnett letting dark peek through the cracks in his grinning dad - joke modus operandi .
Much ofTrapunfolds within that concert hall , as Cooper scrambles to improvise an escape strategy , all while encounter supportive dada to his blissfully incognizant child . But while it ’s theoretically fun to see Shyamalan once more looseness with the spacial and conceptual limitations of a exclusive setting ( his last few movies have all been similarly hold in ) , the problems set about with the apparatus . The concert hall does n’t look vainglorious enough to be hosting aTaylor Swift - style megastar — it ’s like a college gym substitute in for an arena . Lady Raven keep take handily long breaks in the middle of her solidifying , allow Cooper and Riley to give their seats and wind around the locale . And what teenage stan would be hunky-dory miss even a here and now of the performance , let alone take back midway through her favorite song ? WatchingTrap , you ’d swear Shyamalan had never been to a live show . The manic disorder of popping fandom is distinctly an nonobjective concept to him .
Is this nitpicky ? enceinte mess quickly develop in the plot of land . For a while , you question how the hell the confidence would ever even know that Cooper is come to the concert . The solution the movie finally provides is an tremendous stretchiness . Anyway , how precisely do the police plan on catch up with him ? They ’re work , we learn , from the barest of strong-arm descriptions . The sting seems to hinge on the bird of Jove eye of Dr. Grant ( Hayley Mills , grown star of the originalParent Trap , har har ) , a profiler who just kind of uproariously stands around , eye the crew , as though she ’ll be able to describe the killer on sight . She ’s like the clairvoyant crime battler of Shyamalan’sUnbreakablecrossed with the walking expo - auto doctor ofPsycho .
A little verbal and narrative clumsiness always comes with the territory of a Shyamalan movie . Trapis among his clunkiest in that section , a thriller where everyone — from the killer to those hunt him — makes baffling decisions . The negotiation has that signature tune robotic clang . “ I ’m not great at a destiny of things , ” Cooper confesses at one point . “ But sustain my two lives separate is not one of them . ” Say again ? This is n’t his most visually dynamic movie either , despite the presence of the keen Thai cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom ( Challengers , Memoria ) behind the camera . There are times when it ’s obvious that Shyamalan is steer around his budgetary restrictions , but he ’s not always successful at obscuring crowd sizing and make the feeling of a large quad .
you may see what he ’s after withTrap . The movie wants to devilishly toy with our sympathies — to sync our nervous organization to the sweaty endurance moves of a sociopath . In that way , Shyamalan is commune with the Master of Suspense himself , Alfred Hitchcock , doing his own spin on the bumbling criminal offence spree of Norman Bates . There ’s something obviously personal here , too . The picture is most emotionally cheering when viewed as another speculation on the anxieties of fatherhood , à laOldandKnock at the Cabin . In following a bloodthirsty maniac who also happens to genuinely love his syndicate , Shyamalan is probing the agency all parents compartmentalize aspect of their lives . He explores the idea most potently during a disturbing , restrained kitchen conversation — the one moment whenTrapreally star into the darkness .
But the resonant aspects of this game of Arabian tea and mouse end up buried under a mountain of gadget and improbableness , from the really harebrained decision Cooper gain in the 2nd bit — a moment of unlikely honesty that Shyamalan uses to shaft the plot into a new direction — to the two consecutive shot of his supporter / antagonist slipping mightily past a teeming task force at the moment of apparent seizure . Maybe it ’s silly to get hung up on the details of a thriller as proudly ridiculous asTrap . But on a scene by - scene level , the movie never makes a salt lick of signified . The principal impression is that Shyamalan had a fun idea , and make up one’s mind not to countenance any galling logistics get in the fashion . skepticism can only be suspended so far .
