Review by C.J. Bunce
M. Night Shyamalan is that auteur in a small league of directors that includes Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Wes Anderson, and the Coen Brothers. He’ll be forever linked with his break-out masterpiece The Sixth Sense, but his superhero trilogy of Unbreakable, Split, and Glass, and sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and thriller films Signs,The Village, Lady in the Water, The Happening, and The Visit all have their moments. If you like his films, you’re in luck, because Trap, an August theatrical release and his latest mind-bender, is now streaming on Max. And it’s his real-life daughter who is the movie’s best feature.
Ariel Donoghue plays Riley, a 12-year-old girl whose dad Cooper, played by Josh Hartnett, bought her tickets to a big concert at the big, local Philadelphia event venue. It’s not just any concert, it’s Lady Raven, a mega-star in the vein of Rihanna. Lady Raven is played by Saleka Night Shyamalan, M. Night’s daughter, who is also pop singer Saleka. Typically casting a relative is a bad idea. Not here. Saleka’s casting was the perfect choice, her music seems very real, and Riley and other teens help sell the idea of her character as real by emulating her signature dance moves while waiting in line and hanging out before the concert. Lady Raven must be real. That kind of thing is difficult to fake.
Donoghue is completely believable as the excited teen, sharing her joy with dad Cooper, who acts awkward in a room full of thousands of young people like a real dad would. But we soon learn Cooper is not normal. He becomes paranoid when he notices hundreds of police officers at the event–far more than a typical security team.
Soon we see that this movie has some key features in common with Shyamalan’s hit movie Split, where James McAvoy played a psychotic kidnapper-killer who kidnaps a teen, played by Anya Taylor-Joy. Hartnett at last gets an opportunity to convey some range. As Cooper, Hartnett plays all the emotions, especially once writer-director Shyamalan reveals he is a psychotic killer, keeping a prisoner at some secret location he watches via his cell phone during the concert. This is no usual father-daughter outing. This is no usual dad.
Cooper asks a clerk selling concert shirts if he knows why the police are everywhere. The clerk is played by Jonathan Langdon–his cheerfulness and helpfulness provide a necessary break from the tension. The clerk tells him the police are, indeed, at the concert to trap The Butcher, an infamous serial killer. The Butcher is charismatic and once he figures out he is the target he will stop at nothing to sneak away–as noted on intercoms to all the police deployed at the concert by a certain doctor and profiler played by movie veteran Hayley Mills (The Parent Trap… get it?).
Cooper is The Butcher. He quickly devises plans to escape. Will any of them work?
As Lady Raven songs play in the background, Cooper repeatedly finds excuses to leave and return to his seat with his daughter. This Hitchcockian thriller includes its own ticking clock of sorts–Cooper must act before the concert ends, and the police are pulling men from the crowd to interrogate them one by one. Sound preposterous? Not really–it turns out the story came from a real ticketed event sting in Washington, DC, in 1985 that netted 101 criminals.
Suddenly an opportunity presents itself involving his daughter and Lady Raven herself. Only then does the movie kick into full gear. Saleka not only can sing (she wrote and performed the impressive slate of songs in the film), she can act, and she has star power. How often do you watch a movie or series about musicians where the music never is believable as something fans would flock to? Think Daisy Jones & The Six, or even That Thing You Do!, which could only come up with one believable song. Saleka has an entire album of quality music, and you as viewer can even take it home from the concert (it’s available here at Amazon).
Trap is the real deal. And Shyamalan is a master at the genre. The way he draws the setting as so contemporary, so fresh and hip and now, makes this the kind of mainstream movie that should be a major box office hit.
Shyamalan’s impact to modern film can’t be overstated. You can look at films before and after his surprise hit The Sixth Sense and see a shift toward films that require that jaw-dropping surprise at the end. That trademark is now an integral part of cinema, even though it has been used as a story tool throughout the history of film and storytelling. But his use, his success from it, made everyone else jump on the bandwagon. Each of his films has something new to say, but his approach is unique compared to his peers.
Trap is a tense nail-biter without an R rating–a serial killer story with neither gore nor violence–but it’s also a fun ride. Trap arrived in theaters August 9, 2024, and as of this weekend it is now streaming on Max. Don’t miss it. And watch for a brief end credits scene and a cameo with the director.
