This is one of those times I wish a filmmaker like M. Night Shyamalan would follow Hitchcock’s lead in one specific way: Don’t give up the thrust of the movie in the trailer, much like Hitch did with Psycho back in 1960. Beyond just introducing the world to Norman Bates and virtually inventing the Hollywood slasher, the Master of Suspense quite literally helped to change moviegoing norms with that masterpiece by begging his audience to show up on time. Going to a theater was a little more loosey-goosey back in the day (being also somewhat cheaper), and since there weren’t on-stage performers to upset or as much judgment to face if you did, showing up late was perfectly acceptable. This, however, posed a problem for a film like Psycho, given that its biggest star, Janet Leigh, disappears from the picture 30 minutes in, and Hitch took another cue from Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques – a major inspiration for the film itself, not just its marketing – and barred the audience from showing up late. It was, perhaps, the most successful bait-and-switch of its time, and helped cement the norm that you should see a film from the beginning rather than show up whenever you pleased. So it’s somewhat disappointing that Shyamalan would reveal his latest film’s greatest asset – its spectacular first-act twist – in the marketing, but Trap is yet another exceptionally entertaining thrill ride from the director, who continues the hot streak he’s been on since breaking back into the mainstream with The Visit 10 years ago.
If you haven’t watched the trailer or have already been thoroughly spoiled by any manner of information gathering, turn back. These aren’t spoilers in the traditional sense, but Trap is a lot more fun if you don’t know what I’m about to tell you. It’s a good time that you shouldn’t be late for, and thank you for reading. Please click away.
Trap centers around a father-daughter duo heading to a massive concert in Philadelphia. The dad, Cooper (Josh Hartnett), is a firefighter and a goofily affable family man, the kind who embarrasses his teenage daughter, Riley (Ariel Donoghue), by trying to lift her slang and take selfies with her to stick it to the mean girls who used to be her friends. He’s what seems to be a perfectly normal, law-abiding citizen, even refusing to rush a yellow on the way to the stadium, much to Riley’s chagrin. And who can blame her? She’s got floor seats to see Lady Raven (Saleka Shyamalan, her casting being an act of strangely endearing nepotism), her favorite singer, with the whole outing being a big reward for getting an amazing report card after having some trouble at school. For the most part, the experience seems normal for Cooper – he’s awkwardly stumbling through a place that is not meant for his entertainment in the slightest, but he’s doing the best he can. Until then, he has noticed an increased police presence at the arena. Then he notices that a whole bunch of SWAT team members and FBI agents randomly pulling men around his age out of their seats. And it’s at that point that he thinks about his phone and the livestream feed of a young man chained up in a basement that he has on it. And then his mind turns to his body count – the number of dismembered young people left in abandoned buildings around the city, who all saw the same thing before they met their end: his smiling face. They’re there to catch him, even though he has no idea how they knew he’d be there.
What follows is an incredibly amusing cat-and-mouse game between a sociopathic murderer, dedicated to keeping up appearances for his daughter while somehow evading law enforcement, and the FBI profiler (Hayley Mills) sent to stop him. She knows so much about him without really knowing him, and Cooper resents the hell out of that. He’s been seen, and they’re just so confident that they’ll be able to get him… but he’s nothing if not a man who enjoys his work, getting out of sticky situations all while seeming like a perfectly normal person. So, we watch as he glides in and out of places he’s not supposed to be in, taking advantage of every aspect of the concert experience. He befriends a merch guy (Jonathan Langdon) and uses him for information. He sabotages a deep fryer in order to see if he can possibly make it out on the roof. He even manages to sweet-talk a way to get Riley on stage with her hero, even if he has to manipulate the singer’s uncle to get it done. All the while, he’s engaging in little acts of violence along the way, sating the nervous urges that arise within him while trying to plan his getaway. Things go wrong, obviously, and Cooper has to confront his demons, but it takes on such an absurd dimension that it’s impossible just not to roll with Shyamalan as he spins his yarn, even as he begins to hit a Return of the King-like number of endings, each more outrageous than the last.
Trap shares a lot of qualities with Shyamalan’s most populist works, if not his best ones. I don’t mean “the twist,” which comes in the opening minutes, which will undoubtedly break some people’s brains as they try to anticipate what third-act bullshit he’ll spring on them (and, honestly, there’s really no crazy pivot at the end). Rather, it’s a kind of siege movie, in which over the course of a select number of locations, our main character comes under assault by his nightmares and his deeds. Think Signs or Knock at the Cabin: They’re paranoia-drenched films that mine their protagonists’ weakness for anxiety, only this time, the dynamic is inverted, much as it was in Split.
One could say it’s an escape film, like that one, but I’m inclined to see it as the former – it’s a psychic assault on his parallel lives, which would have never met if not for those meddling FBI agents. That aspect of Trap is its most entertaining, and it’s the one that its lead, Hartnett, seizes upon and runs with. He is absolutely fantastic here, slimy and slithery, possessing an absurd intelligence and an ability to use those boyish good looks to get him out of trouble, as well as weaponizing his (once-assumed) kind of anonymity as a leading man to become a chameleon. This revival, in which he’s given roles made virtually for his skill set (like, say, in Oppenheimer and the Guy Ritchie movies he’s been in over the last few years), allows him to explore so many different aspects of his on-screen persona, rather than just being slated into whatever Hollywood production needs a handsome leading man. It’s the kind of centerpiece performance that Shyamalan’s movies have been living and dying on ever since The Sixth Sense, and Hartnett seizes the moment and puts in some truly thrilling work.
It’s interesting, in a lot of ways, to see how people react to a summer thriller as it ages. Think of something like Wes Craven’s Red Eye, which was a similarly effective little roller coaster ride that a number of people said was dumber than a bag of rock salt when it came out. Now it’s aged into something closer to what it actually is – a tremendously fun experience, in which one’s not turning off their brain but rather following the threads of an implausible story to its ridiculous conclusion. Trap operates in a similar way, where its goofy machinations have a nearly supernatural quality to them, treating the suspension of disbelief as a wobbly tightrope that can only be tread upon by some manner of guile, wit and expertise. It’s no surprise, then, that it’s one of Shyamalan’s funniest films, with Hartnett’s interactions with the normal people he comes across as well as his attempts to steer them in the direction he wants them to go in being played for laughs more often than not (an alternative title could be I Can’t Believe That Bullshit Worked). This tonal shift goes a long way in making it land as intended, with “fun” being the operating procedure rather than insight or inspiration.
To say that it’s one of Shyamalan’s least ambitious works feels like an insult, but I definitely don’t mean it as such – I appreciate it when he swings for the fences, but I also like being reminded of why he’s such an interesting part of our cinematic landscape, in how he’s able just to make these kinds of goofy stories work as yarns, and how he’s able to coax brilliant work out of actors like Hartnett, who are game for whatever ridiculousness his scripts toss their way. Much like all of his films, it’ll do nothing to convince his haters of his genius, but it will likely thoroughly entertain everyone else, and make you think twice about accepting those Eras Tour tickets that someone said they’d give you over the phone as long as you show up at the stadium on a random Wednesday morning. That’s a good signal that you might have unpaid parking tickets or some sort of unresolved tax burden and should probably keep a lawyer on speed dial.