TRAP
**
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan.
Starring Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue, Saleka Shyamalan, Hayley Mills.
Thriller, US, 105 minutes, Certificate 15.
Released in cinemas in the UK on 9th August by Warner Bros
Why do we do this to ourselves? Every couple of years a trailer pops up for a film with a neat and sinister premise and then the eventual title card reveals the mastermind behind it all and the uncertainty sets in. Usually saying something along the lines of “FROM THE MIND OF M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN”, we prepare ourselves for months of wandering at which end of the widely varying quality scale his new film will land on. After KNOCK AT THE CABIN, a watered down adaptation of Paul Tremblay’s shattering novel, are we in line for yet another comeback?
Sadly, no. While nowhere near the nadir of AFTER EARTH or THE LAST AIRBENDER, it is still crushing to report that TRAP is a failure, especially after its killer premise, and enticing trailer where we see Josh Hartnett as Cooper, a doting father taking his teenage daughter to a major pop concert, by Lady Raven, a fictitious multi-talented popstar and all round lovely person, only to realise the heavy police presence is part of a trap to capture The Butcher, a notorious serial killer who just happens to be Cooper himself.
Supposedly pitched by Shyamalan as “SILENCE OF THE LAMBS at a Taylor Swift concert”, TRAP fails on pretty much every front. As a tense thriller it fails to raise the pulse and abandons its premise two thirds of the way in and somehow becomes something even more preposterous and Shyamalan’s most unintentionally funny film since THE HAPPENING. This is a cat and mouse thriller where they’re barely aware of each other and a psychological thriller that just remembers what it’s supposed to be ten minutes before the end credits.
Bloodless and completely lacking in tension, TRAP is full of scenes and dialogue that lead you to suspect that Shyamalan barely knows how humans naturally interact or even speak to each other nowadays. A trait which is completely puzzling considering how emotional and grounded THE SIXTH SENSE, UNBREAKABLE and SIGNS were, making their fantastical elements even more effective and memorable. It could be argued that Cooper’s true nature prohibits him from normalcy, but the same excuse cannot be used for the rest of the cast.
Shyamalan has admitted that the film was conceived as a vehicle for his daughter to promote and launch her musical career and while he can be admired on one level for familial pride and his sheer brass neck, it comes across as less forgivable when she becomes an integral part of the plot and is required to interact with the rest of the cast. That the film's most memorable scene involves her using a mobile phone to reach out to her fans on Tik-Tok in a particularly perilous situation, instead of calling the police, provides absolute proof that Shyamalan may have lost all grasp of how human interaction basically works.
Or perhaps the film is a mean spirited take on youth culture and its increasing reliance on mobile phones. Or am I giving him too much credit here? However, the film's concert scenes, captured nicely by cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, expertly evoke the big arena setting illuminated by thousands of luminous phone screens while Hartnett’s murderous figure standing alone in the darkness scanning his surroundings for a way out.
After his impressive turn in OPPENHEIMER it is fun to see Hartnett cut loose here although it does feel like a bit of a wasted opportunity in Shyamalan’s clumsy hands. An oddly entertaining waste of time, but a reminder that Shyamalan is capable of so much more and that is why we’ll always keep coming back to him, just in case.
Iain MacLeod
