The first half or so of Trap reminds me of what Alfred Hitchcock would do in showing us a bad guy racing against time to prevent or retrieve something. In his 1972 movie Frenzy, Barry Foster playing a serial killer finds himself in the back of a potato truck trying to retrieve a tie pin that he knows will incriminate him.
Hitchcock sets the scene up as we find ourselves kinda of rooting for the killer before he is found out. Going into Trap, it should be obvious to audiences that Cooper (Josh Hartnett) is a serial killer known as The Butcher in the Philadelphia area, even though most of the movie was filmed in Toronto. He’s taking his teenage daughter, Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to a concert for Lady Raven (Saleka Night Shyamalan) as a reward for a good report card from school.
What he soon realizes is a very high presence of law enforcement. He has a smart phone showing a live feed of his latest victim, Spencer (Mark Bacolol), who is still alive and captive in a house somewhere. He earns the confidence of a vendor, Jamie (Jonathan Langdon), who says that all employees have been told that The Butcher is suspected of being at the concert. Jamie lets some more information out because Cooper says he’s a firefighter.
I like how Jamie believes that since Cooper is with the fire department, he couldn’t possibly be dangerous. I’m also surprised how none of the police seem to recognize Cooper since most most police and fire rescue often work together on calls. But it shows how simple Cooper is able to fake being an employee of the concert venue to overhear police info during a meeting and even snatching a radio to hear more.
Unfortunately, M. Night Shyamalan, who wrote and directed (as well as appearing in a role as Lady Raven’s uncle, even though he’s Saleka’s father in real life) can’t think of anything outside the concert to keep the movie’s tension. Also, I’m wondering if M. Night has ever been to a concert, especially since Saleka is a singer herself in real life. The concert seems to take place earlier in the day than most concerts because by the time it’s over, there’s still light outside. Even in the summer time, I’ve never gotten out of a concert unless it’s dark out.
And I hate to say this, but this movie feels like nothing more than M. Night to give Saleka the spotlight. She even recorded and released a soundtrack, Lady Raven, for the movie. He isn’t the first filmmaker to pretty much shove his daughter in our face and he definitely won’t be the last. But Saleka really can’t act the role as it’s supposed to be written.
Also, taking the plot away from the concert and moving it to Cooper’s house doesn’t work at all. And then there’s the introduction of Cooper’s wife, Rachel (Allison Pill), in the third act just feel sloppy. But since it takes a lot away from Donoghue and her horrible acting as Riley, I felt Pill was a relief.
Then there is the strange casting of Hayley Mills as Dr. Josephine Grant, a profiler for the FBI, who seems to be in charge of the whole operation. She doesn’t add anything to the role except for a profiler with a British accent, which seems like a cliched trope. I guess it’s a reference to how Mills played in The Parent Trap and its TV movie sequels. But it becomes more of a distraction.
I recently watched The Village, a movie of M. Night’s that got a lot of bad reviews and criticism. But it shows what happens when we go in expecting a twist only to get upset there isn’t one. In Split, when we realized at the end that Bruce Willis’ David Dunn was in the same universe, it was a nice surprise.
I think people are too busy expecting M. Night to surprise us still after more than 20 years, they’re not even watching the story and sometimes I think M. Night isn’t even trying. He’ll make a better movie another time, I’m sure. But you can skip most of the second half of this one.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 