TRAP delivers mindlessly fun thrills from M. Night Shyamalan

Anyone who is familiar with prolific director M. Night Shyamalan’s filmography knows it’s been quite the bumpy road. Many people know him first and foremost for his Oscar-nominated psychological horror film The Sixth Sense, an instant success that cemented him as an important voice in genre filmmaking. However, others may know him for the horrific 2010 remake The Last Airbender, a complete mistake of a movie that desecrates the incredible source material and goes down in history as one of the worst major releases of the new millennium. Since then, Shyamalan has built his reputation back up by producing horror/thrillers that reflect what got him famous in the first place. His newest entry is Trap, a thriller that combines a Silence of the Lambs-inspired mystery with a concert film a la The Eras Tour. His daughter, Saleka Night Shyamalan, is an aspiring singer-songwriter, and this film is essentially M. Night’s way of combining his and his daughters’ professions — she stars in the film as pop star Lady Raven and writes 15 original songs for the film.

Going into Trap expecting the best thriller of the 21st Century is unreasonable at this point. Ever since 2015, when Shyamalan began financing his own films, his brand has been unabashedly silly genre films: from the absurd and fun horror-comedy The Visit to the conceptual and original Knock at the Cabin, his recent outputs consist of mindless chills and thrills bordering on camp at times. It baffles me that many viewers and critics are walking into Trap expecting the next Memento, when Shyamalan is clearly having a great time making a straight-forward edge-of-your-seat thriller that is sure to be a hit at the multiplex. Trap takes place during a concert in which thousands of fans are losing themselves in the music and getting away from their daily grind, and it is clear that this mentality is carried over to the film itself. While many will decry the film for having plot holes or absurd twists, Shyamalan never takes his eye off of the enjoyment and thrills of the audience, which makes it more than worth the watch.

The simple narrative follows Cooper (Josh Hartnett) and his teenage daughter Riley (Ariel Donaghue) as they attend a Lady Raven concert at a large arena. Very shortly into the show, both of them begin to realize something is quite off with the manner in which the concert is being run, and suddenly their safety and their ability to leave comes into serious question. Unfortunately, the trailers released ahead of Trap give away a major plot point — a decision that I believe could hamper viewers’ enjoyment of the movie. Despite me heading into the film knowing this major plot point, the film still flew by and I remained in suspense for the entirety. Part of this is due to Hartnett’s excellent performance as Cooper, a complicated man whose layers slowly unravel as the movie progresses. Despite some obvious implausibilities regarding the plot, Hartnett grounds his character by giving a nuanced performance, telling viewers loads about his backstory without having to explicitly reveal anything.

To be quite honest, my true highlight of Trap is Shyamalan’s directing. For as much flak as the man gets for his style of filmmaking, the direction in his genre films is always top-notch, with tight pacing and amazing use of close-ups and split-diopter shots. The film never attempts to accomplish anything particularly ground-breaking, but during scenes of organic tension  Shyamalan flourishes, justifying his constant presence in the thriller genre. Conversely, the ultimate downside to sticking to one’s guns and not reinventing the wheel is possible staying power. In ten years, it’s difficult to say whether anyone will look back at Trap as anything more than one more Shyamalan thriller that hardly stands out in his filmography, especially compared to thriller classics like The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable. For now, Trap is a harmless and entertaining trip to the multiplex, but at some point Shyamalan needs to begin making films with a bigger picture in mind.

My biggest complaint about Trap is the ending, which leaves things on an odd note that doesn’t seem to resolve much both thematically and narratively. It almost feels as though Shyamalan was setting up for a sequel, which isn’t a concept I am necessarily against, but he plays into a writing trope used far too often by big-budget Disney films to generate buzz even as the credits roll. For the vast majority of the runtime, Trap is a sharply paced and contained thriller, and ruining a perfectly good film with the assumption that the story must continue after the ending is an annoying trend that I wish the movie had not given into.

I may be biased because I work in the concert industry and Shyamalan effectively portrays a hypothetical arena show, but Trap hardly strikes me as a film to chip away at in a review until nothing remains. Not every movie needs to shatter my mind with philosophical brilliance, especially when the notoriously kind M. Night Shyamalan self-produces a thriller which he is clearly passionate about. While this may not be the blockbuster of the summer (Twisters has yet to be dethroned), audiences are still sure to have a good time with Trap, the film equivalent of listening to a well-produced dance-pop song. Are you going to suggest the song to every single person you meet until 2099? Probably not. Did you groove to the song itself while listening? Hell yes.

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