Trap

2024 Directed by M. Night Shyamalan

Horror Marathon 2024 Day 26 Film 54

M. Night’s career has been a meme for the last 30 years, but this may just be the most creatively bankrupt moment for the “auteur.” It’s barely an outline of an idea- a serial killer goes to a concert with his popstar dazzled daughter.

If it had stopped there it may have been a better film. I imagine the chaos and paranoia of De Palma’s Snake Eyes- a movie about a murder at a Boxing match with everyone in the crowd becoming a suspect. Perhaps this would be a twist on the formula- with the paranoia being felt by the killer.

Instead we get an inane script with whole sequences and sections of the film requiring brain rot to believe… Josh Hartnett is obviously trying to do his best with creating some sense of a creepy sharp killer, but every step of the way the script will show him doing an intelligent thing and then falling flat in the face of … M Night’s daughter.

The film spends a good amount of its time as an infomercial tasting of his daughter’s pop performance as Raven. This could have worked if it was just kept as the ambiance for the actual action, but Raven becomes the key part of the plot- outwitting the perfect killer through a series of contrivance and the power of fandomm…

The eyerolling lyrics and generic pop sensibility are put front and center then- tearing any sense of atmosphere or having a point of view. So it’s a bait and switch- the twist was film trailers making you think this was an actual film.

The script wants you to believe that he’s a wily fox that can escape every situation- with characters outright behaving like NPCs in a video game where you can steal from a treasure chest without any recourse. It also wants you to believe that the character’s ego was so bloated that he wouldn’t notice that all the women in the film have caught on to him. He’s in control you see?

Perhaps this says more M Night’s own blindness- that his daughter could sustain a film. It’s a nothing-burger of suspense- as boring as it is insufferable. It wants to hint at something dark with the killer saying he’s so very angry without actually doing anything.

As Raven says on stage- it’s good to set boundaries and to give forgiveness.

I release you M. Night Shyamalan. I forgive you for wasting my time, but I’m not going to watch another one of your films.

XOXO