A serial killer must worm his way out of a sting operation during pop diva’s concert in Trap, a mostly delicious new thriller from director M. Night Shyamalan opening in Prague and cinemas worldwide this weekend. Thanks to an off-kilter point-of-view from the eyes of the killer and what might be a career-best performance from Josh Hartnett, this is easily Shyamalan’s best film since Split, even as it lets the air out of the tires towards the finale.
Trap stars Hartnett as Cooper, an unassuming middle-aged father who takes teenage daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to a concert by pop diva Lady Raven (played by the director’s daughter, Saleka Shyamalan) as a reward for getting good grades at school.
But good ol’ dad also happens to be a brutal serial killer known as The Butcher, made clear during an early scene where he checks on his latest victim, chained in a basement, through his phone. And as Cooper notices early on in the film, this is no ordinary concert; police are everywhere. He gets a friendly t-shirt vendor (Jonathan Langdon) to give up the intel: the FBI, including profiler Dr. Grant (Hayley Mills) somehow know The Butcher is at the concert, and no one is leaving without being vetted by authorities.
Some of the most intense scenes in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho occur when Norman Bates attempts to get rid of a body; we know this guy is up to no good and we don’t want him to succeed, but when Marion Crane’s car appears to get stuck half-buried in the swamp, we’re still left breathless. There’s something relatable to watching an unethical character try to get away with something, and knowing they just might… even if that something is murder.
Trap is well aware of this, and has a lot of twisted fun showcasing how his devious protagonist tries to get himself out of the arena while maintaining his cover in front of his daughter. Hartnett’s Cooper is not a Dexter, he’s a real bad dude and willing to do anything to escape: knocking an innocent teen down the stairs to create a diversion, or creating an explosion of hot oil that maims a fry cook. Or even telling a member of Lady Raven’s staff (played by the director in a cameo) that his daughter is recovering from leukemia in an attempt to get backstage.
Shyamalan has always been a master of suspense despite some questionable storytelling tactics, and he’s at his very best over the first two-thirds of Trap, with the FBI closing in on Cooper and the killer’s every attempt to find an exit leading to a dead end.
Hartnett, too, is in top form in an unusually twisted role. The director can his actors out to dry in awkward sequences intended to convey apprehension and mistrust (think Mark Wahlberg in The Happening) but Hartnett shines through the over-the-top presentation of a sick serial killer hamming it up as father of the year. After memorable turns in last year’s Oppenheimer and Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, his lead here should continue his career resurgence. Saleka Shyamalan, too, is unexpectedly good as the pop diva, who takes on a larger role late in the film.
Unfortunately, Trap takes a turn in its final third with a shift of perspective: instead of investing in how the serial killer will escape, we start to follow how another character will catch him. This still works thanks to Shyamalan’s strong hand (that piano sequence is a real nail-biter), but in much more conventional terms than the movie that preceded it, with a heavy dose of unnecessary exposition.
Inexplicably, the movie repeats this perspective shift once more for a protracted final-final sequence now following a character (Alison Pill, as Cooper’s wife) who was introduced 80 minutes into the movie. But a final scene that plays off of that infamous final shot of Norman Bates in Psycho leaves Trap on a high note; at least until the afterthought of a mid-credits sequence.
Trap is not a complete success thanks to its routine final act(s), but it is a real doozy of a suspenser for most of the way, and a return to Philadelphia form for the director after Old and Knock at the Cabin. Shyamalan does something genuinely interesting in forcing his audience to identify with the killer for most of the movie, and the result is his best work in years.
