Trap Review

 

So, I just got back from M.Night Shayamalan’s newest film, oh excuse me, newest ‘experience’ Trap and I’m not going to mince words here, I found this film incredibly disappointing. Not only was this the first movie in a long time that’s actually made me fall asleep in the theaters, but to me it seems to demonstrate that Shayamalan’s is falling back into bad habits. Though the basic conceit of a serial killer taking his daughter to a pop concert, only for said concert to be a sting operation that he has to escape from is fascinating in its own right. Shayamalan’s frankly bizarre directing choices lead to strange, wooden acting across the board, with Josh Hartnett, who plays the main character Cooper, being the worst offender in this regard. I understand what the intention was, to portray Cooper as a mentally unstable character prone to mood swings and manipulative behavior. A man who is desperately trying to find an escape route while relying on a mounting list of lie to buy precious time to formulate his retreat. The problem is that the events surrounding said retreat, while occasionally clever, are often so ridiculously obvious and wholly scripted that it felt hard to suspend disbelief.

  Now look, I’m not trying to play CinemaSins here and give a little ding for every little unrealistic and if the film’s narrative was compelling enough or the performances were emotionally stirring, I could overlook these less than stellar moments, but the story is predictable at best and contrived at worst while the acting, as previously stated, is fairly flat to the point being wholly unengaging. The movie’s not all bad, the in-universe pop music from the character ‘Lady Raven’ is pretty catching, some of the attempts at horror to inject a little excitement, there’s an intense scene with the Lady Raven character towards the middle of the film that I won’t spoil that did hook me for a few minutes before the movie promptly fumble all of that moments later, slowing back down to the dreadfully dull pace that the rest of the film dragged itself along with.

 Overall, not much positive to say on Trap, at least from me, and honestly that’s a shame. I don’t think Shayamalan is some talentless hack who got lucky with his early movies, as some have suggested. As recent movies such as The Visit…What do you mean the Visit was a decade ago?...What about Split, when was that?...Seven years ago?!! Regardless, Shayamalan has done some good, arguably great film in the latter half of his career and he’s certainly got some creative ideas knocking around his noggin. His upcoming ‘experience’ The Watchers has me deeply intrigued. But Trap feels like seeing an old friend who made some wrong moves but has genuinely been working to better himself, only to fall back into bad habits. Fingers crossed that Shayamalan’s not falling back into the trappings that made people turn against him in the first place. With any luck, this movie is just a misstep on the road to greater things but as of now, don’t let yourself get trapped in this sorry Shayamalan snoozefest. Besides, both LongLegs and Deapool-3 are still in theaters, just give one of those another watch. See y’all later and krank up the noise!