'Trap' Review

Shyamalan's tongue-in-cheek thriller is his best in years

Uttering the name M. Night Shyamalan among film fans garners the most unpredictable responses, ranging from the highest praise to cringing in horror. Once heralded as the “next Spielberg” after his mega-hit The Sixth Sense took the film world by storm with its compelling screenplay and astonishing twist ending, none could have predicted that after a string of successful thrillers (Unbreakable, Signs, The Village), he would succumb to his own hubris and lose the trust of the public when his films turned aggressively silly (Lady in the Water, The Happening). Belief in his talents hit an all-time low when his adaptation of The Last Airbender was deemed one of the worst movies of all time, and few thought he could recover after such a fiasco. 

In recent years, with a string of self-funded small-scale thrillers, it’s clear he still has the filmmaking chops, though he continues to baffle with hit-or-miss performances or dialogue that often feels like a sledgehammer to the face. His new wave of storytelling ranges from tightly thrilling (Split) to egregiously silly (Old). Even stories that try to engage in “current affairs” feel confused at best, with his recent Knock at the Cabin acting as a bizarre apocalyptic take on the culture wars that tried (and failed) to bridge the national divide. Though his formalism is often exciting as he frames his stories with eye-catching cinematography, it has always been hard to know exactly what to make of his bonkers screenwriting. Until Trap.

Trap is the most hilarious experience I’ve had at the cinema in years. All the typical ingredients for a Shyamalan thriller are here; a gimmicky hook, family drama, alien dialogue, and plot coincidences galore. But something feels different this time around; Shyamalan is completely in on the joke now. Whether he’s gained self-awareness from his critics or just finally realized that he’s always been a comedy director, he leans into the absurdity of Trap’s premise with the confidence of a master, ready to carry the audience along on one implausible ride. The result is a tightly paced, claustrophobic story that becomes downright unhinged as it barrels towards its dramatic, hysterical climax. If I’m using contradictory language to describe this unique thriller, it’s because Trap is a contradiction of terms: smart yet dumb, scary yet funny, well-acted yet poorly-acted, family-oriented yet not for families, etc. All of Shyamalan’s films, the good and the bad, have carried this blend of tones, but this is the first time he’s fully embraced his own contradictory career and allowed himself to just have fun.

Trap begins with a father (an exceptional Josh Hartnett in a career-best performance) taking his teen daughter to a concert for Lady Raven, her favorite pop singer. Unbeknownst to his daughter, Hartnett is actually a notorious serial killer known as the Butcher. He wears his dad persona in public, but behind closed doors he’s a madman ready to kill. The story hook kicks in when he discovers that the concert he’s attending is actually an FBI sting operation to catch him. Trying to keep his daughter happy while also trying to escape the concert venue becomes a Hitchcockian game of cat-and-mouse, as Hartnett juggles his good-dad persona and his private desperation to escape. 

The already absurd premise grows increasingly more implausible as one coincidence after another keeps the plot moving forward, but what surprisingly works is the way the audience is thrust into the killer’s point-of-view. Though Hartnett is exaggeratedly evil, his character’s disintegrated parts-of-self illustrate a believable depiction of addiction. It’s a fun-house mirror version of people who try to lead double lives, and emphasizes the tragedy of his love for his daughter and family. Somehow, Shyamalan makes us believe that he truly does care about his daughter and doesn’t want to disappoint her on her special day, but his love isn’t real enough to stop his compulsive murdering. Goodness, what a strange sentence that was. 

On paper, a movie about a trapped serial killer sounds like it should be grisly, but there is very little blood and it keeps itself within the bounds of PG-13. The arch dialogue never lets you get too scared because every few minutes a character will say something to make you question if Shyamalan has ever heard a human speak before. For Hartnett, this bizarre dialogue works because we believe he’s an insane man trying to fake being normal. Less successful in the acting department is Saleka Shyamalan (M. Night’s very own daughter) playing the pop star. Clearly not an actress, she struggles to deliver the lines in any believable way. M. Night actually conceived the entire movie to give his daughter's music career a kickstart, and the first half gives her plenty of screen time performing on stage. Her singing presence is serviceable and fits with the tone, though I’m curious if this will be enough to give her a whole music career. There’s a meta-commentary Trap’s story is making about M. Night’s own film career: Like Josh Hartnett, M. Night is a dad who just wants to make his daughter’s dream come true, and while not a serial killer, he did kill many people’s hopes and dreams when he released The Last Airbender, and spent time in director jail for that crime. M. Night is a flawed filmmaker but definitely a family man, and has stated in interviews that he just likes making movies with his loved ones. For better or worse, this is a movie that he had fun making with his family, and you can feel that familial love on the screen. 

Speaking of family, the central conflict of father and daughter obviously must come to a conclusion. Without giving away spoilers, I’m always struck by M. Night’s insistence on including meaningful pro-family messages in his films, no matter how ridiculous the preceding events were. The game of cat-and-mouse between Hartnett and the police goes in some unexpected directions, but concludes in a narratively satisfying way that gives dramatic weight to the family dynamic. It may be less spiritually significant than the The Sixth Sense or Signs, but for all its goofiness, Trap follows the director’s previous emphasis on the importance of family and the heartbreak when families break down. In the end, while still an outright comedic thriller that leans heavily into the absurdity, this is Shyamalan at his most confident in years. It may not reach the heights of his greatest hits, but it’s his most consistently entertaining movie since The Village, and definitely one this reviewer will revisit.