I Fell Right into M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap

Like most movie fans, I have a love/hate relationship with M. Night Shyamalan. He’s made some of the best genre films of the last few decades, but he’s also made some of the biggest stinkers of this millennium. You simply never know what you’re going to get with a new M. Night movie, so I walked into Trap cautiously optimistic. Was it going to be another masterpiece? Would it be an all-time stinker? Or would it be something in between? I simply didn’t know, but I was sure of one thing: I couldn’t wait to find out.

Trap was written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, and it stars Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue, Saleka Shyamalan, Hayley Mills, and Allison Pill. In the film, Cooper is a seemingly normal man taking his daughter, Riley, to a concert. They’re going to see a pop star named Lady Raven, but when they get there, Cooper notices something strange.

There are police everywhere, and we later find out that they’re trying to catch a notorious serial killer who they believe is attending the concert. As luck would have it, Cooper is the man they’re looking for, so when he learns what’s going on, he immediately starts searching for a way out. He explores as much of the arena as he can, and when things start to go south, he takes some desperate measures to keep his secret from getting out.

I have to be honest, for the first half of the movie’s runtime, I thought Trap was pretty underwhelming. For starters, it’s not entirely clear how the police expect to catch the killer. They block all the exits and plan to question every man who leaves the venue, but I’m not sure what they think they’re going to accomplish.

The guy isn’t going to confess to the murders simply because the police ask nicely, and I can’t imagine them having enough time to interrogate people thoroughly. The whole thing just feels half-baked, so the premise stretches credulity a bit too much.

On top of that, I also had trouble with Josh Hartnett’s performance as Cooper. When he’s interacting with his daughter like a loving father, he’s great. The chemistry between these two characters is fantastic, and you can tell that Cooper really loves his little girl. But once he learns about the trap the police have set for him, he becomes a completely different person.

His reactions to the people around him don’t feel entirely natural, and there are a number of times when he takes a second or two too long to respond. Those odd quirks make Cooper seem awkward and stiff, so as Trap went on, I found myself buying into him less and less.

Last but not least, I thought things worked out a bit too easily for the guy. Whenever he asks the concert workers to do something or to give him some insider info, they always comply right away, and no matter what he steals from employees or even the police, he never gets caught. It’s all just a bit too convenient, so once again, I simply didn’t believe it.

Those three problems made me think I was in for a long night, but then something unexpected happened. A bit after the halfway point, Trap switches gears, and it turns into a fantastic, Hitchcockian thriller. To begin, Josh Hartnett does a complete 180, so instead of being awkward and paranoid, he becomes cool, confident, and utterly deranged.

Even when he’s not doing anything all that horrifying, you can just see the craziness in his facial expressions and hear it in his voice, and that makes for some absolutely white-knuckle tension. Once you find out how psychotic this guy is, you realize that he’s a ticking time bomb that can go off at any second, and since you don’t know when that’ll happen, you’ll constantly be on the edge of your seat as you wait for him to finally lash out.

What’s more, the second half of Trap also has an extended sequence that’s very reminiscent of the classic Alfred Hitchcock thriller Rope. It plays on the fact that we know who Cooper is but the people around him don’t, and it’s so tense you might even have to remind yourself to breathe.

In particular, there’s a scene where someone is in a bathroom and stuff is happening right outside the door, and it’s genuinely terrifying. You don’t see what’s going down, but you hear it, and Shyamalan makes sure those sounds send genuine chills up and down your spine.

In fact, once the movie changes course, it’s pretty much nonstop tension and suspense until the credits begin to roll. Even when things calm down a bit, the mere possibility that they could get heated again will keep you from letting your guard down, and that more than makes up for the weak first half.

It even manages to overcome what I call the M. Night Shyamalan curse, and that’s no small feat. See, we’ve become so accustomed to M. Night’s films having twist endings that when we watch a new one, we often spend way too much time and energy trying to figure out what the twist could be.

I don’t know about you, but that often prevents me from sitting back and just enjoying the movie for what it is, but somehow, Trap manages to avoid that pitfall. I was so engrossed in the story I didn’t even think about a twist, so for the first time in decades, I was able to fully immerse myself in one of his movies and just have a good time with it.

So if you’re on the prowl for something good to watch, I highly recommend that you check out Trap. It’s not quite as good as Shyamalan’s best work, but it’s still a hell of a time. Josh Hartnett gives a nearly all-time performance as the psycho killer, and once M. Night ramps up the tension, he doesn’t let up until the very end.

Trap is playing in theaters right now.