Review: Trap (2024)

Let's twist again, like you did last summer

Trap (2024)
Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan

Josh Hartnett and Ariel Donoghue in “Trap”

The parts of the entertainment industry that depend on narrative storytelling — movies, TV, popular fiction — have now become accustomed to fantastical plots: stories that depend on an element — a character, a setting, a plot development — that couldn’t happen in real life.

In the current example, let’s take serial killers as a trope. While yes, there are always a few loony little men who victimize a series of, usually, women, their predominance in today’s movies, television, and paperback thrillers far outweighs their occurrence in real life. (Though improbable in reality, there are so many fictional serial killers that writers have resorted to ever more ridiculous character traits to set apart their particular Bluebeard from the rest. It’s not enough to be a serial killer; like anyone who wants to stand out, you have to establish your brand. So the erudite cannibal of “Silence of the Lambs” was given a run for his money by a second killer who put his victims through a skin-softening regime so he could harvest their epidermis. The cops and the media then attach a nickname to the killer and broadcast his modis operandi, the better to terrorize the populace.)

Such characters are so plentiful in fiction that having “serial killer” be part of your work’s description is not nearly enough. It becomes just one ingredient in the recipe for a hit book/movie/series, just one piece of the log line — the one-sentence description of a work — that has become increasingly like a game of Mad Libs, in which writers combine and juxtapose narrative tropes to produce something new and attention-getting.

Except that they can’t, really, because the box of tropes is finite, and everything, increasingly, has been done. One desperate screenwriter pitches an executive in Robert Altman’s “The Player”: “It’s a funny-political thing, except it’s a thriller too, all at once… After an accident, the politician becomes clairvoyant, so it’s a psychic, political, thriller comedy. With a heart. Like Ghost meets Manchurian Candidate.”

With “Trap,” the protagonist is a suburban dad (Josh Hartnett) taking his teenage daughter (Arial Donoghue) to a pop concert. Extensive scenes before, during, and after the concert establish him as a stereotypical white upper-middle-class (because who else could afford those tickets, not to mention the $70,000 Jeep-tank he drives to the venue) daddy-o. He makes dad jokes, he fusses dad-like, he excuses himself to go to the bathroom. Out in the lobby, he notices that an army of cops has been deployed to surround and occupy the arena; he learns that the FBI have produced this whole concert for the primary purpose of capturing the serial killer who’s plaguing the state. And then the movie reveals — or strongly suggests — that Dad and the serial killer are one and the same. (That’s all from the trailer; I’m not revealing anything that someone attending the movie wouldn’t know in advance.)

So the pitch for this movie would have been something like “It’s an escape room movie, but the room is a concert in an arena and the serial killer they’re hunting is also just a suburban dad. He has to get out of the arena with his daughter, but without her knowing that he’s the hunted suspect. And also I want my own daughter to write all the songs and play the pop star.”

Didn’t see that coming? The man who made that pitch is M. Night Shyamalan, the writer-director famous for eerie stories that feature a couple of sharp twists before the end — and his daughter Saleka is indeed a recording artist, so yes, that’s what happened. And because almost everything else about “Trap” is a known quantity, I’ll spend a little time talking about the presence and performance of Saleka Shyamalan in the film, partly because her role contains the most surprises and partly because both her character and her performance are among the few elements of the film I could take seriously.

Like most childless adults, my familiarity with young pop/R&B recording artists begins and ends with what’s reported on NPR or in a daily newspaper. I know nothing except what I hear about on “Fresh Air” or see on the Super Bowl Halftime Show. I have no ground from which to critique this genre of music. But it was clear to me, as the most casual observer, that Saleka (who performs under her first name) is the real thing. The album’s worth of songs she wrote for the film and performs as a pop star named Lady Raven is not fake pop, it sounds like the real thing. So while some of the situations and dialogue during the extensive concert sequence may strain your patience, the musical numbers being performed, one after the other, do not. And the whole movie depends on it being a credible representation of a pop concert, complete with dancers, costume changes, projections, and first and foremost, a credible pop star.

No, Saleka’s voice is not Lady Gaga’s. It doesn’t have that kind of force. But then Saleka did not write that kind of music. She wrote, for the most part, breathy-sexy dance numbers and a couple of ballads to which she also does justice. Just as important, she’s convincing as a stage performer who is used to channeling the energy of a screaming crowd.

But then in Act III she has extensive acting and dialogue scenes after the concert is over. She goes with Dad — Josh Hartnett’s character’s name is Cooper — and daughter Riley to their home for tea and cookies. By this time she’s aware of Dad’s secret identity and, after an increasingly unhinged conversation full of small talk, she takes control of the whole situation. And while she’s not a great actor, she’s better than the audience expects her to be. So in addition to the credibility she lends the film through her music and her performance of it, she keeps the film on an even keel during these crucial scenes.

But then comes the patented Shyamalan plot twist. And while I won’t reveal anything, I will say that the film’s climactic scene is not Dad vs. Saleka or Riley — the three characters who have occupied 95% of the movie — but Dad vs. Mom. Cooper’s wife is played by Alison Pill, who as an actress does not possess nearly the gravitas necessary for the lines she has to speak here. The scene requires her to step out of the persona of timid housewife she has played for the whole act and speak the truth to her husband even though he’s holding a small meat cleaver. She falls short.

Who is this movie for, I wonder. Does Josh Hartnett have a big following? I don’t think so? Nor do any of the other people in the movie, and while it may do something for Saleka Shyamalan’s renown, the fact is that the people who bankroll movies simply see M. Night Shyamalan’s name on a film and write checks for it. By this same phenomenon of inertia, Woody Allen kept getting funds to make films every year long after he had stopped being capable of making one that was actually good. Likewise, Shyamalan’s reputation has not outlasted this willingness to bankroll his films. If “Trap” is the last one, he would be going out on … not a high note, but let’s say a respectable one.

But imagine this movie as a comedy. Same setup — serial killer dad takes his daughter to a pop concert only to find out it’s an elaborate trap — but played for laughs. It writes itself!