M Night Shyamalan is a frustrating filmmaker. He’s made some great movies, some bad movies and everything in between. And that’s fine. But even with the bad movies, it always seems like there is a germ of a good idea there. I don’t know what goes wrong sometimes, but I feel like he either can’t figure out how to put it all together, or he just can’t get out of his own way. Trap is a little bit of both.
If you’ve seen the trailer for Trap you may feel that it gives away an important details or the twist. That’s not the case though. The majority of what you see in the trailer is revealed within the early stages. Sure, it may have been better not to know, but it doesn’t affect things much.
Trap stars Josh Hartnett as a man who is taking his daughter to a concert of her favourite singer (played by Shyamalan’s daughter Saleka). But it’s become known to the FBI that a serial killer they are chasing will be at this concert. They don’t know who he is, or even what he looks like, but they are using the concert as a trap to catch him.
It’s a pretty good idea for a movie. Sure, it doesn’t seem like something the FBI would do in reality (give a serial killer a bunch of potential victims or hostages – or maybe I’m wrong), but I’m willing to suspend my disbelief. And for a while, the movie works. It’s setup nicely and uses the environment to build up the suspense. But it isn’t long before things start to go awry. It's frustrating.
Simply, the plot starts to get too ridiculous. By the end I was just shaking my head at what was happening on the screen. And every time suspense had been built, it dissipates with a weird choice. Worse yet, the movie just doesn’t know when to end. There are a few moments where it seems the movie is ready to wrap up, and then there’s another scene. It’s as though Shyamalan kept thinking “wait, I just came with one more thing that can happen”, and the idea was forced into the script.
The cast is decent. Hartnett is great at times, and at others his performance is off putting. That may have been by design, but it took me out of the movie at times. Saleka Shyamalan is a fair singer (and I can’t help but feel the whole movie was made just to showcase her as a singer), but she can be stilted as an actor, but that’s an issue with a lot of the cast. To be fair, the dialogue they are given is not good, and I would guess there’s only so much you can do with that.
While it starts well, Trap is unable to keep the goodwill it had built up with a strong start. If you’re a big fan of Shyamalan’s work this may appeal to you more than me. It isn’t his worst movie, but I would hesitate to call it good. It has its moments but overall, it falls apart. It’s not a movie I would recommend, and certainly isn’t something you need to see on the big screen.
Did you see Trap? Are you planning to? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.