Trap (2024) Review: Josh Hartnett’s Game Performance Can’t Save This Potentially Intriguing But Silly Thriller
Trap looks like it’s going to be an ingenious thriller coming from the mind of M. Night Shyamalan. Besides, it boasts a storytelling hook of a killer who finds himself trapped in a sold-out concert with hundreds of cops blocking every possible exit in and out of the stadium. How is he going to escape? After three consecutive disappointments beginning with the half-baked Glass, followed by the ludicrous Old and the overlong Knock at the Cabin, I was rooting for his latest movie to be his comeback (yes, I’m well aware the word “comeback” gets thrown around a lot associated with Shyamalan’s notoriously inconsistent directorial efforts).
Well, the movie gets off to a promising start as we follow doting father Cooper (Josh Hartnett) taking his young daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to famous pop star Lady Raven’s (Saleka Night Shyamalan) concert in the (fictional) Tanaka Arena stadium. While Riley looks overjoyed watching Lady Raven singing on stage with 30,000-strong crowds fully occupying the concert venue, Cooper realises something is not right. He notices there are more police guarding the arena and soon, he learns from a vendor (Jonathan Langdon) during an interval that the heavy police presence has to do with setting a trap to catch a serial killer nicknamed The Butcher. And apparently, these police led by a seasoned FBI profiler Dr Grant (former child star of 1961’s The Parent Trap, Hayley Mills) receive a tip-off that the killer will be in this very concert.
This brings back to the question of “how is he going to escape?” as Cooper, who is the Butcher himself, tries to look for a way out and even goes as far as causing a series of distractions. It was initially a fun premise to anticipate whether he could make it out of the concert and it helps that Hartnett, playing a rare lead role in a major studio picture since 30 Days of Night seventeen years ago, delivers a game performance as the seemingly loving father leading a double life as a serial killer. Save for some of his awkward acting moments looking as if I’m watching someone playing a character from an old-school, black-and-white sitcom, Hartnett is certainly having a field day here in Trap. He shares a wonderful chemistry with Ariel Donoghue, where the latter delivers solid support as Cooper’s daughter.
But as the movie progresses further, the sillier it gets with Shyamalan’s screenplay is chock of plot holes and overreliance on sheer luck and coincidences as we see Cooper manage to get a hold of something important (e.g. a police radio, despite the presence of many heavily-armed cops on the floor) like he’s some kind of a magician. I don’t mind if a movie requires a suspension of disbelief to enjoy the story. However, there are many times Shyamalan approaches his otherwise ticking-clock premise like a borderline parody of such a thriller genre, making it unintentionally laughable. He even throws in awkwardly misplaced comic relief in the form of a persistent mother (Marnie McPhail) of one of Riley’s high school friends, who keeps bugging Cooper whenever she has a chance.
It’s a pity that Shyamalan can’t sustain the momentum once Saleka Night Shyamalan’s Lady Raven becomes a prominent character later on, leading to an underwhelming second half before it eventually deflates its tension in the third act. Speaking of the latter, it looks as if Shyamalan loses steam and all we have here is a disappointingly limp payoff that doesn’t justify all the elaborate setup planted from the beginning.
Despite clocking only 105 minutes, the movie’s erratic pacing and frequently inept storytelling certainly feel like a sluggish trap of fooling the audiences (at least that’s what bothers me the most) thinking this is going to be a thrilling cat-and-mouse game. I’m sure some may find this entertaining but personally, it was a missed opportunity that wasted Josh Hartnett’s good performance in this movie. Looks like it’s a double whammy for Shyamalan this year with Trap and The Watchers, where he produced his daughter Ishana’s ambitious but heavy-handed directorial debut.
