Trap
Pop music really can change your life. That’s part of the setup of M. Night Shyamalan’s near-miss of a thriller “Trap,” a movie that actually feels less like the Night Brand than a lot of his twisty ventures, a sort of pared down version of what he does that needed a round or two more of fleshing out its best ideas and amplifying its visual language. Night is at his best when he has a team of craftspeople to help elevate his best ideas in films like “The Sixth Sense,” “Old” (a movie that has really grown on me), and “The Village,” but “Trap” too often lacks the craftsmanship it needs to crackle with energy and tension. Despite these missteps, Josh Hartnett almost makes “Trap” worth seeing, imbuing his character with a playfulness that can be captivating. It’s just a shame his great work sometimes feels trapped in a movie that doesn’t know what to do with it.
The majority of “Trap” unfolds at a place that can be truly terrifying for a parent forced to spend hundreds of dollars on the latest pop superstar. In this case, it’s Lady Raven, played by Night’s daughter Saleka Shyamalan, a pop star shaped in the image of someone like Taylor Swift – one of those performances wherein the average age in the crowd is in the teens, and everyone knows all the words. Saleka wrote and performed most of the music, and there’s bluntly just a bit too much of it, especially because it’s not quite as catchy as T. Swift.
Attending this Lady Raven show in Philly is an average guy named Cooper (Hartnett) and his teen daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue). Shortly after their arrival, and with minimal character development, Cooper notices a strong police presence at the venue, including heavily armed men at all the doors. Through a brief act of politeness, he earns the trust of a vendor (Jonathan Langdon) who lets him on a secret – the cops and feds are there because they know that a notorious serial killer named The Butcher is in the building. Cooper is that man.
Their plan to stop every man who leaves the building and basically put them in front of ace profiler Dr. Grant (a woefully miscast Hayley Mills) to determine guilt makes absolutely no sense, but people buy a ticket for a movie like “Trap” knowing the premise, and Shyamalan’s film gets by on its set-up for a while, largely because it allows Hartnett to shine through the opening act. Hartnett makes numerous smart, subtle choices that convey Cooper’s precise personality, particularly in a sly smile that reveals how much this sociopath is kind of enjoying the unexpected challenge.
