It’s A Trap!
TRAP (M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN) 2024
⭐⭐⭐
“That’s bait”
Max Rockatansky, Fury Road: A Mad Max Saga
High-concept movies are notoriously difficult to pull off, requiring a great deal of cooperation from an audience with a willingness to ‘just go with it’ when logic begins to creak under pressure. In producing arguably his most flat-out silly and entertaining movie which, for long periods doesn't take itself too seriously, writer/director M. Night Shyamalan is able to keep the audience onside for a good portion of Trap. Ultimately, though, it becomes that gig that doesn’t want to end, and rather than a crowd-pleasing finale, attempts a first and second encore with songs that nobody really likes and for which everyone has forgotten the lyrics, while the audience smiles politely but just wants to leave to miss the traffic on the way home.
It’s not even a case of close, but no cigar.
By inserting the trademark twist at the beginning, which most - if not all - of the audience is aware of heading into the movie, Shyamalan is basically working in reverse. Soon-forgotten, half-remembered details will rarely ruin a surprise to come even if they become more obvious on repeat viewings. But here, there’s no hiding place if things don’t align, or a significant leap of imagination is required. The most significant leap here is present in the trailer. The strength of the movie is that director Shyamalan and star Josh Hartnett make you care little, at least not right away, that a character has just revealed the details of the trap to the central protagonist, no matter how unlikely that happening might be. It just means we get to the juicy cat-and-mouse earlier, right?
Yes and no. It would have said a lot more about Shyamalan’s writing, and the deviousness of central character Cooper Adams, if he had to do more legwork to first uncover and then plan his way out. As it is, things tend to fall his way through the poor decisions and bad judgement of other characters. Of course, irrational, ill-informed decisions are a key component of the horror genre, so why is it more of an issue here? Again, I think it’s down to Shyamalan attempting to turn things upside down by having the bad guy as the central character. For long periods, all of his decisions seem to work out a little too conveniently, even if Hartnett does a fantastic job of conveying genuine anxiety that they won’t, while trying to plot his escape.
In fact, Hartnett is superb for pretty much all of the movie before the script finally sinks him. Charming dad. Protective parent. Convincing actor. Calm sociopath. Actually, that last bit is another loose strand that never quite gets tied up even in the late exposition and backstory in one of those encores. That, though, might be one of the smartest decisions the script makes. The longer we can see Cooper as an ordinary father spending time with his daughter, the less time we have to concern ourselves with the messed up dark heart at the centre of the movie and question why we’re rooting for him or, at the very least, enjoying this game. What’s most impressive about Josh Hartnett’s performance is the switch between personalities. It’s a trait I always admire in actors - the ability to show one side and then in an instant become someone else, changing the entire mood. Great examples of this include Viggo Mortensen in Cronenberg’s A History of Violence and John Carroll Lynch in Fincher’s Zodiac.
Here, there’s an agreement between director and star to use it sparingly, at least early on, with Hartnett subtly dropping his mask to reveal something unknown, but which feels instinctively darker, and then putting it back on, most impressively within scenes, particularly one with another child’s parent. Shyamalan emphasises this element through tight closeups of Hartnett’s face and POV shots from other characters’ perspectives, so we can begin to see the emptiness of the smile even while others can’t. When his own daughter who knows him best tells him he’s acting weird, he effortlessly course-corrects, though as things get more desperate he is able to maintain the illusion for shorter periods. It’s not just the facial expressions. It’s the confidence or anger or calmness in his voice that fluctuates. It’s such an unexpectedly good performance and one which I hope will bring Hartnett greater opportunities in future..
Elsewhere on the acting front, Ariel Donoghue is very natural and likeable as Hartnett’s daughter and key component in the double-life narrative. There’s just enough in the script to persuade us that she would be so caught up in the occasion that she would pay less attention to her dad’s frequent disappearing acts, and she’s pretty convincing. But it’s the director’s daughter, Saleka, who takes most attention away from Hartnett as music star Lady Raven, whose concert is the trap of the title. Putting aside the whole nepo baby thing, she’s neither the best singer nor the best actress, but she’s good enough to be passable in each, even if you can’t quite picture her being the centre of so much adulation. To be entirely fair to her, there’s lots about the concert design within the movie that feels a little off, so it’s not the best showcase. She does prove late on that she can certainly hold a note, with a nice piece accompanied only on piano.
Shyamalan is able to maintain a sense of fun for most of the first half, even if there are uncomfortable reminders dropped into the proceedings that tell us that this is the bad guy. At times it’s hard not to laugh at some of the increasingly outlandish ideas and lines Hartnett is putting forward, but they’re sold so well by both star and director that it’s hard not to want to play along. But things turn significantly darker and more contrived in the second half as attempts are made to bring the story to a satisfying conclusion. The decision of the director to take us out of the limited confines of the concert venue to do so loses too much of the intrigue that is so compelling within the story. The tension snaps and we are left with a movie that doesn’t seem to have a clear idea of what the ending should be, or where to end it, resulting in one predictable half-twist, and constant attempts at misdirection when the audience can already see the rabbit clambering out of the magician’s hat and making for the exit.
Ultimately it’s poor execution that sinks Trap despite having very effectively lured us in with its juicy bait. In truth it’s not the result of one final misstep but of a whole host of decisions and story elements in a final act that never comes together, where fun becomes just a little too dumb, and clever becomes too convenient, that stops us from feeling that this was something great. In lots of ways, this sums up a lot of M. Night Shyamalan’s output. It seems that, even working from a different starting point, those shortcomings prove too hard to escape.
