“Trap”: M. Night Shyamalan’s New Thriller

A thriller centered around a pop music concert, which has been planned as a trap for a dangerous criminal.

Summary

Cooper Adams has promised to take his teenage daughter to a famous pop star’s concert in reward for her good grades. The day of the event, father and daughter show up at the concert venue, where there seems to be an unusually heavy police presence.

They don’t know it yet, but Lady Raven’s show was planned for more reasons than mere entertainment: catching a serial killer among the attendees.

The Cornered Serial Killer

The starting point of Trap was great. In the first minutes, our protagonist finds out that all the employees at the venue are part of a plan to catch a serial killer, and just after, we find out that the protagonist is the killer. Too bad that the movie trailer already revealed that. Finding out in the theater would have been a good twist.

We follow Cooper as he tries to figure out a way of leaving the place without being captured by the police and without his daughter Riley realizing what’s happening. He shows an outstanding ability to manipulate people to get the information he needs, and through his investigation, he realizes the only viable exit for him is backstage. This is how his story mingles with Lady Raven’s, the pop star of the moment.

Saleka’s Eras Tour

The character of Lady Raven, her success with young people, and the scope of her shows will inevitably remind you of Taylor Swift and his tour. I suppose that was the intention.

There have been some comments on Shyamalan casting his own daughter in such an important role, and on centering the film around her concert. And it kind of looks like an attempt to promote her career.

However, while I would agree that a more experienced actress could have done a better job than her, Saleka is far from a disaster. She also has a nice voice, so overall, I liked her performance.

Shyamalan and His Plot Twists

Once the characters exit the concert venue, right until the end, the director takes us through a series of plot twists that become increasingly difficult to believe. Everything that happens in the last forty minutes is improbable at best.

The film has established that Cooper is very smart, and it wants us to believe that Lady Raven is too. But none of them make smart decisions. When Cooper reveals his identity to Lady Raven, for example. That was useful when it came to leaving the place without being checked by security, but what was he planning on doing next? Even if Lady Raven had not insisted on going to his house, she already knew who Cooper was. She knew his daughter, and everybody has seen the girl dancing on stage with her.

In fact, the most intelligent thing Lady Raven could have done was leave him outside the venue and call the police immediately. They could have found him through social media, just by checking the daughter’s profiles. But then, the film would have ended right there.

As I think usually happens with Shyamalan’s work, he is not as smart as he thinks.

Another problem I found is that there seems to be no stakes. We are told that Cooper is a violent monster, (and Josh Hartnett does a good job with his performance), but the people around him never seem to be in real danger. The worst thing he does is purposely injure a worker at the concert, but I knew that neither his family nor Lady Raven would be dead or even injured by the end. It makes the experience a little boring and kills suspense.

Box Office Results

Trap has made $72.076.224 at the global box office so far, according to The Numbers. Consider that the alleged budget for the project is around $30.000.000.

I have to admit that I liked Trap more than Knock at the Cabin, another film that Shyamalan released last year, and a lot more than Ishana’s The Watchers. It’s an interesting idea, but I feel the development of the script could have been a lot better.