Jonah Naplan   August 2, 2024

M. Night Shyamalan’s third project in three years is a film called “Trap,” and it’s a clunky, bizarre and occasionally brilliant movie. In the post-Covid era alone, the modern master of suspense has been hard at work, releasing “Old” in 2021, a disappointing, single-location thriller that had more promise than actual effect, “Knock at the Cabin” in 2023, a mostly successful (again single-location) thriller that demonstrated the best use of all the aural and visual tricks he’d perfected throughout his long career, despite plenty of frustrating missteps, and then producing his moviemaker daughter Ishana’s first feature film “The Watchers” earlier this summer. Now he’s come out with a new thriller of his own that’s not only a classier vehicle for him on a larger scale but also a personal concert film for a different Shyamalan daughter, Saleka, who’s currently making her way as an R&B singer-songwriter. The result is a mixed bag with several really excellent ideas and an almost equal number of ineffective ones that all would have been given more room to percolate if Shyamalan had allowed his narrative to be more fleshed out.

The first half of the movie is what’s marketed. Middle-aged dad Cooper (Josh Hartnett) takes his teen daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to a packed Lady Raven (played by Saleka Shyamalan) concert in Philadelphia only to find out that the whole event is a trap to catch the serial killer known as The Butcher who’s expected to be at the event, one that is otherwise primarily attended by teenage girls (Lady Raven is essentially Taylor Swift in a new cinematic package). Thing is, Cooper is The Butcher—which I curiously wasn’t aware of upon seeing the movie, despite that detail having already been revealed in trailers—and he’s appropriately worried for his own sake when he sees the barricade of police officers surrounding the entrances and exits as well as inspecting potentially suspicious concertgoers in the audience during the show.

In talking to a friendly merchandise vendor (Jonathan Langdon), Cooper learns of the plot, headed by ace profiler Dr. Grant (Hayley Mills), and then, mainly through pure luck and coincidence, manages to stay out of sight and remain undetected all the way through the concert’s encore. This first section gives Shyamalan the chance to showcase all the masterful ways he can ratchet up tension between characters and create a compelling and, if taken to the next level, unnerving atmosphere for all his action to take place. A pop concert is a fascinating if not entirely obvious setting for a thriller, being that it’s loud and stuffed with overly enthusiastic people who may not be giving signs of trouble around them much attention. For a parent who’s been dragged along to one of these by an ecstatic daughter, they could certainly feel trapped among the chaos. Shyamalan does a commendable job in creating a shifty environment with lots of secret nooks and crannies and hiding spots, and his pacing and camerawork in all the concert scenes makes it easy for the viewer to understand exactly what Cooper’s next move will be in a given moment.

Then the movie promptly leaves the concert setting and gets super bonkers and unserious in the second half, even by typical Shyamalan standards. None of it was teased in the marketing material, so I won’t spoil it here, even if, despite the clear ambition, the whole section just feels silly and irreverent instead of actually potent or necessary. The movie has you asking why a character did or didn’t do this or that instead of truly investing yourself in what’s unfolding onscreen. It doesn’t help that I never knew how I was supposed to feel about Cooper’s character, which some could argue is exactly the point, but that I would reckon makes it more difficult to connect to the story. Hartnett is undeniably terrific in the role, turning in a performance with so much nuance that demonstrates his entire comedic-to-dramatic range as an actor and proves to other directors that he’s game for anything, but his character is written so bizarrely, to the point that it’s impossible to resonate with him on any level.

A late, very dialogue-heavy scene where everything gets blatantly laid out and explained to us feels particularly out of place, and drives home the point that Shyamalan’s big ambitions can’t exactly match his lackluster execution and that “Trap” probably would have been more successful if he had taken more time to develop his ideas, all of which are very interesting by themselves but not as effective when compiled together. What could have been a very intriguing conversation-starter about how the essence of evil can lie just under the undaunted physique of people who appear perfectly normal on the outside but are harboring dark secrets on the inside instead turns into a senseless, mostly entertaining, and very dumb movie that is still somewhat worth watching because of Hartnett’s exciting performance and the many opportunities to talk about what went wrong here.

It’s a real shame that neither one of Shyamalan’s artistic daughters have gotten their well-deserved start-up yet, despite each boasting very bold attempts this year. “Trap” may be slightly better than “The Watchers,” but it still falls subject to the same curse that has long bewitched Shyamalan, that being the inability to match a great concept with equally as admirable execution. He seems to get so overwhelmed by the idea of his story that he can’t quite figure out how to tell it. His best work like “Signs,” “The Sixth Sense,” and “Unbreakable” reminds you that he can pull off a suspenseful masterwork in the echo of Alfred Hitchcock, but that lightning in the bottle is a challenge to capture again. Like his confusing protagonist in “Trap,” I guess Shyamalan’s just hard to follow.

Now playing in theaters.