‘Trap’ Assessment: Shyamalan’s Best Film in Ages

All by means of the early years of his profession, M. Night Shyamalan was flattered with (and dogged by) comparisons to the nice Alfred Hitchcock. The comparisons had been affordable, however by no means fairly proper. Yes, Shyamalan, like Hitchcock, made twisty suspense movies. But not like Hitchcock, Shyamalan’s virtually all the time got here with some kind of supernatural bent. The man was lifeless all alongside. The dude who survived a horrible practice crash was an honest-to-god superhero. The apocalypse begins, and just one couple’s noble sacrifice can cease it.

Alfred Hitchcock would by no means have made The Sixth Sense, or Unbreakable, or Knock on the Cabin. But he might need made Trap, the newest and most overtly Hitchcockian thriller Shyamalan’s ever made. In a way, Hitchcock did make it, as a result of Trap is a intelligent mixture of an entire bunch of various Hitchcock movies, together with Psycho, Frenzy, Suspicion, and Rope.

From the latter, Shyamalan borrows the premise of a lurid, murderous melodrama largely set in a single location. In the case of Trap, the situation is a Philadelphia sports activities area on the day it hosts a live performance by a widely known pop star named Lady Raven (Shyamalan’s personal daughter Saleka, who’s a budding musician in her personal proper). Among the 1000’s of attendees on the live performance, Shyamalan narrows in on simply two: A rabid teenage fan named Riley (Ariel Donoghue) and her father Cooper (Josh Hartnett).

READ MORE: Every M. Night Shyamalan Twist, Ranked From Worst to Best

Speaking right here as the daddy of a music-loving child named Riley, I can say this with some authority: There’s simply one thing a bit off about this Cooper man. No dad of youngsters this age is this chipper, this affected person, this darn good when he will get dragged to a pop live performance he has zero curiosity in. You’d need to be loopy to be this upbeat about all this.

Sure sufficient, Cooper harbors a darkish secret, though Shyamalan reveals it to the viewers pretty shortly: Cooper is definitely “The Butcher,” an notorious serial killer who’s claimed 12 victims, and already has a thirteenth locked away in an undisclosed location. During the live performance, Cooper fakes a visit to the toilet, so he can get some sadistic jollies monitoring his captive by way of a secret app on his cellular phone.

Cooper is clearly a skillful and misleading psychopath, and it’s not lengthy earlier than he notices an unusually giant police presence at this Lady Raven live performance. Buddying as much as a sociable merch salesman (Jonathan Langdon), Cooper learns that the present is definitely an enormous entice designed to catch the Butcher. Somehow, the cops discovered that he could be in attendance at Lady Raven’s present and hatched a plan to catch him as he leaves. There are officers posted at each exit. SWAT groups patrol the rooftops. Teams are grabbing any grownup man who even vaguely matches the Butcher’s description — and there aren’t that lots of them at a pop live performance for teenage ladies! — for questioning. Meanwhile, an FBI profiler (Hayley Mills) anticipates Cooper’s each transfer. There actually is likely to be no approach out.

It’s not simply that Shyamalan has cooked up a reasonably engrossing (and non-supernatural) premise that provides Trap such old fashioned Hitchcock-y vibes. He’s additionally borrowed all types of methods from the Master of Suspense. Hitch cherished to power an viewers to establish with felony, as Shyamalan does right here. He was additionally pathologically paranoid in regards to the police, supposedly courting again to an incident from his personal childhood the place his father satisfied the native precinct to lock little Alfred as much as train him a lesson. In Trap, in all places Cooper turns, he’s hounded by faceless mobs of cops.

Hitchcock additionally cherished to mood disturbing moments with darkish humor, which Shyamalan does repeatedly in Trap. He fills the margins of the story with all types of quirky supporting characters, and he always forces Cooper to decide on between indulging his style for violence or sustaining his facade of non-threatening middle-aged dadhood — as when that pleasant merch salesman hooks Cooper up with a T-shirt, and concurrently arms him an infinite field cutter.

Shyamalan additionally will get a terrific lead efficiency out of Hartnett, who manages to seek out simply the correct stability between disturbing — and Cooper is commonly genuinely scary — and hilariously humorous, as when Cooper by chance walks right into a nest of ready SWAT snipers and has to suppose up a convincing lie on the spot. Cooper is certain to grow to be one in every of the actor’s signature roles.

While it seemed like Trap’s trailers gave away most of its surprises, the movie stored a bunch of methods up its sleeve that weren’t even hinted at in its advertising and marketing. I can’t spoil them right here, though I’ll say I’m not fully sure the entire later surprises work, or that the entire supporting gamers are giving performances of the identical caliber as Hartnett.

Still, I appreciated the truth that I might by no means anticipate the place Trap was headed. This, too, jogged my memory of Hitchcock, who all the time had a knack for realizing what to inform an viewers to get them within the theater, and what to withhold from them in an effort to elicit the right response. Back within the day, the limitless comparisons between Shyamalan and Hitchcock felt like a little bit of a entice themselves.  With Trap, although, there’s no level making an attempt to flee them.

Additional Thoughts:

-Casting Hayley Mills — AKA the star of the unique Parent Trap — in his personal movie referred to as Trap that’s a couple of guardian who can also be a serial killer is likely to be the funniest factor in any Shyamalan movie.

-You can name Shyamalan casting his up-and-coming musician daughter because the world’s largest pop star an act of shameless nepotism. You might additionally argue that in a movie in regards to the excessive lengths a loving father will go to in an effort to indulge his musically-inclined daughter, it was the one thematically applicable selection.

-As the dad of a candy lady named Riley, who takes her to issues I’ve completely zero curiosity in, who tries to encourage her passions even after they appear far-fetched, who would do virtually something to guard her from harm or hurt, who has been recognized to get pissed off on the dad and mom of her mates after they do issues to upset her, however who is totally not a serial killer, I need to let you know I nonetheless did discover a truthful quantity of this movie fairly relatable.

RATING: 7/10