M. Night Shyamalan’s thriller begins with an intriguing premise, then devolves into utter stupidity. I still had fun with it, even if I was rolling my eyes at how ludicrous it was.
I watched this movie during my flight from Singapore to Melbourne, and had to pause it a few times while waiting for the turbulence to pass. It wasn’t an ideal way to experience what’s supposed to be an edge-of-your-seat thriller, so I have to credit Shyamalan for keeping me engaged, from the promising start to the ridiculous end.
I was never into Josh Hartnett during his peak heartthrob phase, but I can finally see the hype more than twenty years later, after his excellent supporting turn in Oppenheimer and now a proper lead role in Trap. The man belongs onscreen and deserves a renaissance, just please give him a better movie to star in.
Hartnett plays Cooper, an average middle-aged dad who dutifully takes his teenage daughter Riley to a pop concert as a reward for good grades. Once inside the venue, Cooper quickly notices an unusually strong police presence. Turns out, all those heavily armed men at the doors are out to capture a brutal serial killer called the Butcher, who they know is at the concert… and Cooper is their man.
Though it’s hardly a realistic scenario, a pop concert is an inspired setting for a thriller. It’s after all a strange sealed-off world of its own, full of drama and heightened emotion even without a serial killer thrown in the mix. As long as the movie sticks to its premise and Cooper must use his ingenuity and luck to avoid capture and keep his daughter in the dark, the film is fairly entertaining and mischievous. None of it is plausible, especially when some shots make Cooper look hilariously sociopathic while he’s trying to act normal, but Hartnett is charismatic and playful, effortlessly switching from a dorky dad to a scheming psycho. He also has affectionate, believable chemistry with Ariel Donaghue, a charming newcomer who plays Riley. You genuinely want her to have a good time at the concert, which perversely means that you’re also rooting for Cooper to not get caught straight away.
Riley’s musical idol is Lady Raven, a somewhat dated amalgamation of real-life female pop stars (I’ve been to a few live pop extravaganzas, and I have to say that for a supposed megastar Lady Raven’s stage production is weirdly low-budget). She is played by Shyamalan’s own daughter, and it’s hard to avoid suspicion that the movie is a not-so-secret showcase for his offspring. She acquits herself as a pop star, with credible onstage presence and vocal chops, and tunes that are not worse than the majority of today’s popular music, but she comes off as far less comfortable with dramatic acting.
Just when Lady Raven morphs from a background figure into a key character that Cooper has to deal with, Trap abandons its concept and the compelling father-daughter dynamic, and takes a turn for the jaw-droppingly dumb. At some point I ceased my internal oh come on and just sat back watching as the movie went completely off the rails in its third act, with contrived “shocking” twists and about five fake endings. Somehow, I was still eager to see what happens next and what stupid baffling choices the characters were going to make.
Love him or hate him, Shyamalan has carved out his own niche and is a rare director who can still get his original projects financed… and I guess I’ll keep on watching his movies, whether they’re good, bad or ugly.
P.S. If I was a teenage girl at a concert, I’d hate to be stuck behind someone as tall as Josh Hartnett.
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