You know that feeling you get when you’re walking at a brisk pace, and then you catch your foot on something, and you trip and start to fall? You try to regain your balance, but you’ve lost control and you’re going down. After you hit the ground, you shake yourself off, feel sheepish about the whole thing, and hope to quickly forget it.
That’s how I felt while watching writer-director M. Night Shyamalan’s preposterous psychological thriller “Trap.” We’re just picking up the pace when the plot falters and begins to fall. Over the second half of the story, each new semi-twist is more implausible and laughable than the next, until the absolute howler of an ending. The best one can do is shake oneself off and hope to quickly forget it.
Shyamalan has pitched “Trap” thusly: “What if ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ happened at Taylor Swift concert?” and all right, that’s kind of an intriguing albeit crazy hook. Josh Hartnett, who makes some … interesting if not entirely successful acting choices throughout, plays a firefighter named Cooper who is taking his teen daughter Riley (Abigail Donoghue) to see the globally famous, Olivia Rodrigo-esque pop star Lady Raven (Saleka Shyamalan) to a daytime arena concert.
There’s an unusually heavy police presence at the show, and Cooper befriends a dopey T-shirt vendor who spills the beans: The entire concert is an elaborate ruse to capture a serial killer dubbed “The Butcher,” as police have reason to believe he’s in attendance.
Cooper’s face falls. You see, he’s The Butcher.
I like this move by Shyamalan; he has given us some of the most memorable twist endings in movie history, but this time out, the big reveal comes very early on. Let’s see where he takes us!
Alas, “Trap” is built on a foundation of nonsense. The authorities don’t know what The Butcher looks like beyond a few vague details, so they’re going to question every single dad at the exits. Really? Time and again, the plot requires a number of authority figures to be complete dupes, as Cooper pulls off a series of moves that alternate between ripping off “Die Hard” and ripping off the aforementioned “The Silence of the Lambs.”
For a while, we’re willing to ride out the frequent speed bumps, thanks to Shyamalan’s clever filming and framing of the extended concert scenes that serve as the backdrop for the cat-and-mouse game, along with exquisite cinematography by Sayombhu Mukedeeprom and sound work that captures the feeling of hearing a concert in an expansive arena. Still, staging a sting at a concert to capture a guy called THE BUTCHER is a really, really, bad idea. (The story is loosely inspired by the real-life Operation Flagship in 1985, but that was staged in a controlled environment with no danger to the public.)
As for Lady Raven … Saleka Shyamalan contributes 14 original songs and does a credible job onstage, performing a number of catchy tunes, but once Lady Raven gets caught up in the series of insane developments that happen post-show, we’re knee deep in The Land of Unintended Laughs. “Trap” is a well-crafted shell with nothing inside.
