Trap (15)

Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Screenplay: M. Night Shyamalan

Starring: Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue, Saleka Shyamalan

Running time: 105 minutes

Cinema release

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Review: David Stephens

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The cinematic equivalent of a rolling dice is back in play. Alright, that may seem a little mean, but you never know what you’re going to get with an M. Night Shyamalan movie. And we’re talking quality, not plot twists. From the sheer brilliance of The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Split, to the meh efforts of Old and Glass, right down to the jaw-dropping badness of The Happening and The Last Airbender. When he’s good though, he can be very good. That’s where the roll of the dice comes in. So, Trap then. The teaser trailers were fairly cool and had a neat premise (as much as you can trust in a trailer anyway). The addition of the underused Josh Hartnett as an (apparently) against-type character was also intriguing. It’s very, very, very loosely based on an IRL concept. Namely, back in 1985, US Police set up a sting operation, sending 3000 contest invites under a fake company name to fugitives on the run, telling them that they had a chance to win a ticket to the Superbowl if they handed a token into a city office. The 120 of them who were dumb enough to turn up were immediately arrested. From that wacky premise, and the impact that massive concert tours have on cities, Shyamalan directed and wrote this latest project. Starring Hartnett, Alison Pill, and Hayley Mills (?!), the Trap is now set in UK and US cinemas for those who want to take the bait. Is it worth it?

It starts with likeable Philadelphia firefighter Cooper Adams (Hartnett) driving to the city arena with his excitable daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue from Wolf Like Me) in the car. They’re going to the Lady Raven concert (think Taylor Swift crossed with Dua Lipa… or whoever the Hell else the kids are into these days) which is part of a gift to Riley for her good grades. Stoked beyond belief she puts up with his teasing and Dad jokes as they reach their seats. However, Cooper has noticed the unusual police presence, sudden ID checks, and lurking SWAT vans that start to encircle the arena. Impressing a merch seller with his good nature and support of his daughter, Cooper learns that this activity is due to a sting operation which is intended to catch a prolific serial killer known as “The Butcher” (nil points for whichever reporter came up with that moniker). That shouldn’t concern an innocent man, right? But Cooper seems to have some severe problems with the situation and starts to try and find a way out…

Oh dear. If we were going to be uncharitable, we’d suggest switching the “T” from the title with another letter of the alphabet. It’s not as bad as After Earth and some of the other lacklustre M. Night projects, but boy… is it close. The problem is that as daft as it is, the core premise could have been quite fun. We won’t spoil the events if you’re keen to learn whether or not Hartnett is indeed “The Butcher”, or if there are any further plot twists afoot. However, as shown in the trailers, you go into the film knowing that there is something “sketchy” about his character and that he is keen to escape the titular entrapment. As such, the idea of an antagonist/protagonist (take your pick) matching wits with massed security forces in an enclosed area is a nifty one, as unrealistic as it may be. A sort of anti-matter Die Hard if you will, with a person of ambiguous qualities at its centre. And if that was purely the case, then this could have at least been an entertaining experience. But looks can be deceptive.

If the premise is promising, then the placement of Hartnett as the focus of the shenanigans is just as positive. And the underused actor actually goes for it here. Although the beats of his character are sold a little in the trailer, his performance is much better when he’s allowed to breathe a little. Certainly game-for-it and pumped-up for emotional twists, Hartnett is not afraid to ramp up the scenery-chewing and edge into slightly more OTT qualities as the narrative fleshes out his character. The problem is that the film doesn’t allow him to fully utilise that performance and give him the moments that he deserves. There are one or two scenes that threaten to do just that, standout sequences in fact. But mostly he’s just lost in the rising levels of ridiculousness and po-faced drama that overwhelms most of the plot.

Likewise, a fine turn from Alison Pill, a spirited bit of teenage angst from Donoghue, and Mills doing her best attempt at Doc Loomis exposition, all feel at odds with the muddled tone of the story. Most annoying is the almost complete refusal to exploit the main situation. The plot creeps near something approaching “good” when it concentrates on Cooper looking for an escape route. To do this, he basically goes “Bad MacGyver”, booby-trapping fast-food fryers, sneaking into SWAT meetings, and stealing staff costumes. Now, if the narrative had concentrated more on this element (like the trailers suggested it would) and amped up this battle-of-wits, it would have been a lot more successful in its ambitions. Sadly, this aspect of the plot is sacrificed surprisingly early on. Instead, there are some incredibly bad decisions are made by those in charge and even Riley gets suspicious of her father’s Clark Kent excuses to keep disappearing. Seriously, take a shot every time she asks him why he is acting “so weird” and wandering off. You’ll be completely sozzled in no time at all.

If some more genuine humour had been injected into proceedings, or the plot had at least poked some self-knowing fun at itself, this might have been more bearable. But the fact that the whole “trap” is driven by the chance discovery of a ticket stub and the amazingly vague descriptions given by an FBI profiler, makes the whole thing ridiculous from the start. This was enough evidence for an entire police force to surround a public building and hold searches amid 20,000 people? Can’t see any judge signing that warrant off! The looniness of the plot reaches massive levels the longer it goes on, with a supporting character being elevated to that of an unlikely hero and the machinations of the police being shown to be less reliable than a chocolate teapot. Seriously, even Frank Drebin would face-palm at the mistakes made by this lot! The old “helmet-on-a-stick-decoy” gets an outing and fools everybody, despite multiple cameras being in play. Shocking!

Aside from janky logistics and the general stupidity of law enforcement, far, far too much time is spent on incidental concert footage, rather than Cooper’s escape efforts. It’s frustrating because, along with his lame attempts at chaos-inducement, there are one or two moments of genius. There’s a fine sequence in the latter section where two characters tearfully discuss the nature of rage and anger, which hints at a darker level towards which the film could have aimed at. In addition to that, there are stone-cold moments of people being used as pawns in a darker scheme. In other words, if the story had committed to a much darker (or maybe even a more satirical) tone and focused on the escape-the-trap element, it wouldn’t have been so jagged and unsatisfying. It just needed something more than… well, what it is now. As it stands, you do have to question the amount of time given over to Lady Raven (Saleka Shyamalan), yet another gratuitous cameo by the director, and the strange mostly off-screen time given to Hayley Mills. Was her involvement just to infer a meta in-joke to “The Parent Trap”? Speaking of failed sniggers, the mid-credit sequence is one of the most dire efforts yet seen in a major cinema release and should be avoided like the plague.

As it stands, aside from a couple of performances (including the spirited one by Hartnett) and some decent ideas, this is another disappointment from the director. Whenever it looks like things are going to get good, they just get dumb again. The promise in the trailer of a tricksy intellectual dual is lost in a messy confusion of half-hearted villainy and half-formed situations. It’s not going to be enough to draw the punters in by word-of-mouth at least, and the word-of-the-critics is no better. Oddly enough, the outrageous rumours that circulated online regarding an extra twist at the end are much more entertaining than the truth. (“The daughter is a vampire!!” Can we see that film? It sounds much better.) However, the ending suggests that this may not be the last we see of “The Butcher”. Let’s hope that this is a lie, and the trap is now shut for good.