Trap
After enabling and producing his daughter Ishana’s directorial debut The Watchers a few months ago (spot the Easter egg in Trap), M Night Shyamalan seems hellbent on collecting the “Father of the Year” award. During the promotional tour for his latest thriller, the cult filmmaker revealed that with Trap, he wanted to centre a feature around his other offspring’s music career and had her write a conceptual album for her fictional alter ego in order to launch the project.
The theme of paternal relations also bleeds into the film’s story. Because his teenage daughter Riley is a big Lady Raven (Shyamalan’s daughter Saleka) fan, Cooper (Josh Hartnett) decides to reward her good grades with stall tickets to the pop star’s recently announced extra concert in Philadelphia. Alarmed by the heavy police presence at the venue, the doting father’s night quickly turns sour, when he finds out that the FBI is planning to use the show to catch a serial killer known to the public as “The Butcher”.
Inspired by the visual concept for Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name, Shyamalan not only adopted the idea of shooting everything with a 35mm lens on 35mm film to mimic the focal length of the human eye, but also decided to hire the very man responsible. Cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom finds extraordinary ways of creating a partial experience, aligning the viewer’s gaze to the film’s protagonist, who feels like the proverbial animal caught in a trap.
The PG-13 rating (15 in the UK) allows for younger audiences to see the film, likely targeting the Swift crowd who are just coming off their own concert experiences, but fails in any development of a well-conceived or even interesting sociopath. The tiptoeing around The Butcher’s crimes – completely neglecting victimology and modus operandi – leaves a clichéd attempt at psychopathology and the dilettante depiction of FBI profiling work will frustrate anyone who has seen more than one episode of Criminal Minds. These decisions leave it down to Hartnett alone to make Cooper an intriguing character, but he manages to allure audiences by leaning into the baffling contradictions of simultaneously being a devoted father and a ruthless killer: a warm smile that can turn ice-cold and maniacal in a split second.
Audiences have to be willing to overlook certain plot holes and illogical elements throughout the movie in order to enjoy it, but there comes a tipping point when it becomes all too obvious that the characters are forced to make certain irrational decisions in order for the story to continue. This fumbling in the third act proves once again that while Shyamalan remains a great entertainment director, perhaps he would be better suited to try his hand at adapting other people’s screenplays.
Selina Sondermann
Trap is released nationwide on 9th August 2024.
Watch the trailer for Trap here:
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
YouTube
RSS