Film Review - Trap
Images courtesy of Warner Bros.
Fresh off his 2023 film Knock at the Cabin, M. Night Shyamalan is back in the director’s seat continuing his run of self-financed films–-which began six films ago for The Visit in 2015—with Trap, a confined space thriller so reverent about its premise that it’s hard not to love. The film centres around Cooper (Josh Hartnett), a firefighter who takes his daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to a concert of the pop star Lady Raven (played by real life musician and Shyamalan’s daughter Saleka). As they arrive, Cooper notices the heavy police presence and discovers the concert has been set up in tandem with an FBI operation to catch a serial killer. The conceit being, unbeknownst to all but the audience, the serial killer in question is Cooper, and he will do anything it takes to escape.
What’s most presently delightful about Trap is just how much Shyamalan revels in the amusement of his premise. From the trailer, the marketing and its establishing opening sequence, there is no secret kept about Cooper’s status, and Shyamalan uses this early narrative reveal to align the audience’s hopes with watching him evade the police and escape. It’s an interesting framework that in the wrong hands could easily be mishandled, but crucial to its success is Shyamalan’s ability to treat the silliness of rooting for the killer with a wicked glee.
Set to the rhythm of Lady Raven’s moody, R&B inspired pop music, he frames Cooper in tight spaces, trapped by both the physical space of the stadium around him, but also within the claustrophobia of phone flashlights, large crowds, and eyes that linger for too long. It’s full of inventive and effective camerawork, with Shyamalan composing his shots to make the stadium feel small and inescapable, anchoring the audience in the same feeling of Cooper’s restriction.
Crucially, despite the oppressive effect the stadium has, there’s an element of pleasure that Cooper takes in plotting his escape. Working perfectly with Shyamalan’s clinical, artful directing–which treats the situation with a total seriousness in how it creates and holds tension–is his writing, which is rooted in an inherent humour and verve for the narrative. Josh Harnett’s histrionic yet calculated performance echoes this, as much of the film’s tonal shifts are dependent on his micro facial expressions, deliberately unnatural delivery of dialogue, and meticulous, borderline comical movements. The entirety of his environment is presented with the potential to be interacted with; whether that’s the merchandise store, employee access only rooms, or the stage on which Lady Raven is performing on. There’s a playful joy in watching Hartnett’s eyes beam open as he sees avenues for escape, disguises to wear, or spontaneous plans to enact, Trap’s embrace of this Hitman-like frivolity is absolutely part of its charm.
It’s a film that would be so easy to dismiss as unproductively silly, one that as it goes on delves deeper and deeper into the hyperspecificity of the serial killer’s plan and loses sight of its sturdy cat-and-mouse opening act. But by that same measure, the intentionality of what it does evolve into is every bit as compelling whether it’s a sincere moment of fear and suspense, or a tongue-in-cheek self-reflexive piece of humour. The cocktail of tones and juxtapositions between performance and direction feel intrinsically tied to Shyamalan’s ability to partially self-finance the film, with his creative control fully on show here. The result is a refreshingly modern and idiosyncratic film that feels almost antithetical to the filmic formula that the studio system often caters for, and left me excited that a filmmaker like Shyamalan is still exercising his creative hand in original and tonally ambitious ways.
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Trap is screening in cinemas now.
For tickets and more info, click here.