Trap * (2024, Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue, Saleka Night Shyamalan, Hayley Mills, Alison Pill) – Classic Movie Review 13,116

The credibility-challenging 2024 American serial killer thriller film Trap is written, directed, and produced by M Night Shyamalan, and stars Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue, Saleka Night Shyamalan, Hayley Mills, and Alison Pill.

The FIB surround a pop concert, where they know a late 30s, early 40s white male serial killer called The Butcher is among the audience and are planning to arrest him. Philadelphia firefighter Cooper Abbott (Josh Hartnett) takes his teenage daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to pop star Lady Raven’s (Saleka Night Shyamalan) concert as a reward for her good grades. Suddenly Cooper notices the high police presence at the concert venue.

M Night Shyamalan’s 2024 horror thriller film Trap is an unconvincing and unpleasant ‘catch a serial killer’ movie, with one good performance – by Josh Hartnett – and even so he is very hard pressed to make his stock psycho character and the mechanical plot work. There’s way too much pop music performance, holding the serial killer movie up and back, and not nearly enough plot or shocks and surprises to fill the 105 minutes, even padded out with the too much pop music. The plot is really just an extended premise. Humble old Brit black and white B movies running 70 minutes are much, much better plotted and more complexly developed. The pop concert plays like a satire of a pop concert a la Lady Gaga or Taylor Swift, but I fear it is meant to be taken, and enjoyed, seriously.

Hartnett plays an American father who takes his teenage daughter to a pop concert, and finds he has entered a trap. He keeps checking footage on his phone of his latest captive victim, Spencer (Mark Bacolcol), in a basement somewhere. No further spoilers.

With the camera focused on him, and mostly his face, throughout the movie, Hartnett is good enough to make you wonder why his leading man status went down. Maybe at least this high-profile role will boost his career. Gratuitously he takes his shirt of for the climax scene. He’s still in good shape. Is this exploitation? There are several quite irritating performances in support. Hayley Mills is wasted and unconvincing as the canny FBI profiler. Alison Pill is none too convincing as mom. M Night Shyamalan is unconvincing in a tiny cameo as Lady Raven’s easily persuaded uncle, who works as a spotter at the pop concert.

And, just when you think it’s all over, there’s a lame final payoff, similar to a scene in Silence of the Lambs, where Anthony Hopkins actually makes you believed he’s a psycho. Yes, Hopkins may be a luvvie, but that nice British actor has successfully followed his Sixties theatre boss Laurence Olivier’s advice to Dustin Hoffman: ‘Why don’t you just try acting?’ and persuaded us he’s a cannibal.

And so who is the audience for it? The main appeal would be to teenage girls, who’d probably hate the serial killer idea and the scary dad idea. Thriller fans may well feel unsatisfied and horror buffs not catered for at all.

Though I like and admire Hartnett enormously – and he is entirely entertaining here, giving a very strong performance, wholly credible as a devoted but conflicted and troubled family man – he can’t persuade me he’s a psycho. As a serial butcher, he’s just joshing. Actually, it’s all fake. If I’ve fallen into a trap, and the real movie is somewhere else, please point the way to it for me.

Surface-wise, Shyamalan films smartly and slickly on credible real locations (okay it’s mainly Canada and not the US, but it’s attractive and credible). The cinematography by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom and the editing by Noëmi Preiswerk are admirable. The pop concert itself looks real, and is staged for real, so there’s plenty of that kind of poppy atmosphere. The songs are performed on stage as a real concert, with choreography by Cora Kozaris, and onstage material was recorded on video and projected on the stadium’s screens in real time in a shoot involving thousands of extras. All that’s good.

The film premiered on 24 July 2024 in New York City and was released in US cinemas on 2 August 2024 by Warner Bros.

Duration: 105 minutes.

Josh Hartnett in Lucky Number Slevin.

Cast: Josh Hartnett as firefighter Cooper, Ariel Donoghue as Riley, Cooper’s daughter, Saleka Night Shyamalan as Lady Raven, Alison Pill as Cooper’s wife Rachel, Hayley Mills as FBI profiler Dr Josephine Grant, aJonathan Langdon as concert vendor Jamie, Mark Bacolcol as Spencer, Marnie McPhail as Jody’s mom, Scott Mescudi as the Thinker, Russell “Russ” Vitale as Parker Wayne, Marcia Bennett as Cooper’s mom, Lochlan Miller as Cooper’s son Logan,  and M Night Shyamalan as Lady Raven’s uncle.

It is made by Blinding Edge Pictures, the US film and TV production company that Shyamalan founded in 1998. Shyamalan managed to keep the budget of his self-funded film down to $30 million, so its $80 million box office was comfortable.

Trap (2024) was shot at FirstOntario Centre.

Principal photography began in Cincinnati, Ohio, in August 2023, with more than $9 million in tax credits. Production relocated to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, from October 16 to December 8, 2023. The film’s Tanaka Arena pop concert venue was filmed in Hamilton, Ontario, inside the 20,000-seat FirstOntario Centre, which was undergoing renovations, Toronto’s Rogers Centre stands in as the venue’s exterior.

Josh Hartnett starred in the brilliant 2006 thriller Lucky Number Slevin.

© Derek Winnert 2024 – Classic Movie Review 13,116

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