M. Night Shyamalan’s “Trap”

Trap (2024) - M Night Shyamalan, United States

“…there’s a good film in there buried under missteps…”

★★★

In an effective opening act, Trap oozes with a setup that feels like pure Hitchcock but as the film progresses, things start to fall apart despite some excellent moments. It’s something where a number of recent films written and directed by a single person have stumbled. Shyamalan has come up with some terrific ideas but his hit rate on execution has not been great. I can’t help but wonder if a collaborator on the script or direction wouldn’t resolve at least some of the issues.

Here, we have the story of firefighter Cooper Adams(Josh Hartnett) who takes his daughter, Riley(Ariel Donoghue) to a concert by fictional singer Lady Raven(Saleka Night Shyamalan) where the police lie in wait as part of a police operation to catch a serial killer known as “the Butcher”. The setup is well done and there’s a nice build up of tension as all the players take their positions. Act One promises a lot.

Harnett, Donoghue, Saleka Shyamalan and Alison Pill are well cast and do well with what they’re given, but there are some distracting exceptions. The first is Hayley Mills as serial killer hunter, Dr. Josephine Grant whose cheesy dialogue is only exacerbated by Mills’ Queen’s English. She never truly felt like a real person like Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive or any of the supporting cast in The Silence of the Lambs. Then there’s M Night Shyamalan’s appearance which isn’t as bad but is likewise distracting. Finally, Kid Cudi as The Thinker plays the part as it was given but it felt like the cliche of premadonna celebrity; not everyone is James Corden. In terms of the extras, there are points where they feel extremely unnatural, particularly in street scenes where it’s as if they’ve been told to look animated. The effect is something altogether goofy like that classic clip from Quantum of Solace where an extra is sweeping the air above the ground except here, it’s a group effort.

One thing to call out is Sayombhu Mukdeeprom’s cinematography is terrific from the claustrophic crowds of the concert to the more open spaces in the final act. The only thing is that it feels he’s much more restrained here than in his work with Apichatong Weerasethkul or Luca Guadagnino which to some extent that can be expected given the genre here.

The final act despite poor execution has some great ideas. There’s one scene which is essentially an inverted version of the finale from The Man Who Knew Too Much(1956) with Doris Day where things come to a boil, but the increased presence of Dr Grant and increasingly ludicrous and unnecessary plot devices bury the films greater potential. It also continues beyond where it should have finished. And this is the crux of my reaction to the film, there’s a good film in there buried under missteps and I wonder what would have been had Shyamalan let go of his hubris and worked with a collaborator on the writing or handed the script to another director.