“It’s kinda dope, right?” Vendor (Jonathan Langdon) to Cooper (Josh Hartnett)
M Night Shyamalan is kinda cool as thriller directors go, Sixth Sense and all. In that cinematic arena, he may have as much respect as, say, Wes Craven, and as well known. Shyamalan’s new Trap is less the twist-`turn as we’ve come to expect from him but more straightforward serial killer nailbiter.
Trap’s script is nothing special, but Josh Hartnett’s performance as a troubled dad is notable while the picture is riddled with bad logic yet also with downright enjoyable summer fare. You may carp about how a police force could possibly vet 20,000 Taylor-Swift-like concertgoers, but then you’d miss the fun of seeing how profiler Dr. Grant (78-Year-old Hayley Mills) takes that number down to The Butcher (Hartnett, revealed here because the trailer tells us so!).
Among other unusual aspects of Trap is the pov almost always from Cooper’s because he needs to find an escape form the concert, whose cops are waiting to bust the killer when he leaves along with the 20,000 fans. Along with his teen daughter, Riley (Ariel Donoghue), Coop is just another fan, but he’s vulnerable because of the profile and his growing nervousness, of which he has little anyway.
Shyamalan has crafted a modern thriller, not set in the Lecter lair but with the us media slaves, who tend to be sloppy about our safety when with thousands of other devotees and under the spell of a masterful pop singer like Lady Raven ( Saleka Shyamalan, the director’s daughter and composer of over a dozen of the songs—a promising young talent).
The plot twists are not of the magnitude as the director has given before, but what he has added is richer characterization and a setting all to familiar to the modern viewer. What the hey, go with his flow, accept the improbabilities, and enjoy a summer thriller with some different twists.
Trap
Director M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense)
Screenplay: Shyamalan
Cast: Josh Hartnett (Lucky Number Slevin)
Rating: PG-13
Length: 1h 45m
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts NPR’s It’s Movie Time and Cinema Classics as well as podcasts Back Talk and Double Take (recently listed by Feedspot as two of the ten best NPR Movie Podcasts) out of WCBE 90.5 FM, Columbus, Ohio. Contact him at JohnDeSando52@gmail.com