According to M. Night Shyamalan, the premise of his latest feature boils down to a simple question : “What if The Silence of the Lambs happened at a Taylor Swift concert?”
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It’s an inventive concept, but Trap delivers on one of those references more than the other. The film is a concert movie for Shyamalan’s daughter, the musician Saleka, wrapped in a middling thriller kept afloat by a compelling performance from Josh Hartnett.
Trap opens with Cooper (Hartnett), a dad-joke machine, and his daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) at a concert for pop sensation Lady Raven (Saleka Shyamalan). The stadium overflows with hyperactive adolescents, some waiting outside hoping to catch a glimpse of the singer emerging from her trailer and others practicing one of Lady Raven’s viral dance routines in the lobby.
Riley, who has been struggling with some friends at school, seems particularly excited. She rushes her father through the parking lot where they’ve parked, eagerly joins a group of girls dancing near concessions and marvels at the merchandise available for purchase. This would be a typical concert scene if it weren’t for the swarm of police officers patrolling the arena and guarding each entrance.
With the help of an amusing merchandise vendor, Jamie (a scene-stealing Jonathan Langdon), Cooper learns that Lady Raven’s show is a sting operation. Federal agents and local authorities are trying to catch The Butcher, a serial killer whose victim count recently entered double digits. As Jamie divulges the details of the enterprise, including the special code words staff must use in the presence of The Butcher, Cooper gets increasingly nervous.
For the truly spoiler-averse, now is the time to stop reading. (Just know that you should stay for a funny post-credits sequence.) Those who watched the trailer know that Cooper is the wanted man, but that’s only the first twist.
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Shyamalan’s Trap has more tricks than recent offerings like Knock at the Cabin , but they are more of the raised-eyebrow kind than the sharp-inhale-of-surprise variety. After Cooper gathers the initial intel, Trap becomes a suspenseful game of cat and mouse. The first half of the film is precise and entertaining. Working with master cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, Shyamalan gleefully experiments with off-kilter shots and negative space to render the arena as a booby-trapped maze. The director effectively grounds us in Cooper’s perspective, coaxing us to map our own escape routes.
For a while, it’s thrilling to see Cooper outwit the authorities and Hartnett is a big part of that. His performance is wily, often funny and subtle in its shiftiness. He’s introduced as an anxious father but then his particular behaviors — a hyper-attention to detail, the effortful attempt to control his jaw muscles, the tenseness of his smile — become signs of a more malevolent violence. As Cooper sneaks into private areas, chats up the arena staff and schemes a getaway, one can see how his charm and humor make him a perfect suburban husband to wife Rachel (Alison Pill) and father to their kids, as well as an infamous murderer. Hartnett convincingly balances Cooper’s bifurcated identity: He is a serial killer whose relief comes from cutting up his victims’ bodies and a father trying to give his daughter the world.
Shyamalan can probably relate to the latter desire of Cooper’s. The first half of Trap betrays the director’s greater interest. Shyamalan’s daughter Saleka wrote, produced and recorded an entire album for the film, which adds a haunting layer to composer Herdis Stefansdottir’s score. Many of Saleka’s songs are featured in their entirety, and much of the beginning of the film is dedicated to seeing her strut across the stage in elaborate outfits or mimic the moves of her cadre of backup dancers. These moments also double as a study of star power in the social media age. The glow of phones raised in the air to record moments, the viral choreography and the community of dangerously committed fans are all explored at some point.
With so many different threads, Trap struggles to maintain its momentum. The repetitive nature of Cooper’s chase blunts the stakes and a side quest with Lady Raven ends up not feeling as significant as it should. By the end of the second act and well into the third, Trap , although stylishly directed, can’t help but lose some of its edge.
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