Movie Review: "Trap" (2024)

I watched this movie on the night of Friday 16th August and the review was written on the night of the 17th of August. I've had some time to think this one over after being stuck between a rock and a hard place.

*

The new Shymalan movie: if this was 2002 I'd be really excited.

(This is an inside joke between my brother and I. For the life of me I have no idea where it comes from).

We cannot ignore the fact that M.Night Shymalan is one of the great directors of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. However, we also cannot ignore the fact that his last film entitled Old was so spectacularly bad, I honestly had the same thought as everyone else: By god, his career is over. That's it, it's all gone.

And we thought that for a while. That was, until Trap came out and M.Night Shymalan proved that he had changed his tune. No longer was he the man craving a twisty epiphany a la Sixth Sense - something he could not replicate no matter how hard he tried in his latter films. Trap instead, is a fun, rowdy psychological thriller with all the taste and expectation of a shaky-cam Brian de Palma movie. For me, I felt like our director was not trying to be all too serious with us, instead he was just hoping we had a good time and guess what? We did.

The film is about a trap that has been set for a murderer named 'The Butcher' who the FBI believe is going to be at a concert of a singer known as 'Lady Raven' (weirdly played by Shymalan's daughter). This 'trap' is meant to be the concert, but it isn't. There are multiple layers to it and it doesn't take the audience long to realise that Cooper (Josh Hartnett) is the murderer that this trap is laid out for. This is established fairly early on and so, it is not a spoiler at all.

As the pace increases, Shymalan takes us on a journey of cat and mouse rather than trying to turn our minds inside out. He makes it fun and crazy with the FBI trying to stay in front of the killer and the killer trying to stay in front of the FBI. This happens so much that nobody really knows who is ahead of who anymore. Once The Butcher thinks he is ahead, the FBI are one step ahead of him and vice versa. There is a serious unknown atmosphere amongst the audience about who is winning the race at any one given time. The pacing was pretty great to be honest and apart from all that weird Joker-esque laugh stuff that Hartnett does, is perhaps my favourite thing about the movie.

This movie has gone and acquired itself a shaky reputation. Some people like it and some people think it's awful. I think the people who believe it is bad are still expecting Shymalan to do what he was doing in the late-1990s and honestly, if they were expecting that then well, he didn't even do that in Old so you technically can't like that one either. Shymalan is an ever-evolving director who is trying something new with his time. He wants the audience to realise that they can simply go to his films to have fun so you guys have to stop hanging the goose that doesn't know it's dead above his head. People can create different things. I should know, I listen to Bob Dylan.

The movie is more than often a funny realisation of you know what's happening here (i.e: you know who the murderer is and what he's trying to do) and then the idea that you have no idea what's going on over there (the FBI are searching for him and then they are always that slight step ahead that makes the realisation all the better). Once the second half of the movie gets underway, you start to realise that the whole idea that the concert is the only trap is a farce. There are a lot of these moments where one is trying to outsmart the other just for the other to lose and yet, by the end your one question will be about whether this was all meant to happen the way it did.

In conclusion, I thoroughly enjoyed this movie though the singing act was far too long in my opinion. It was one of those movies that I believe the director made in order to save his career after whatever mess he made of his last film. It was fun, it was rowdy, it was psychological, it was brilliant. Plus, Josh Hartnett was absolutely awesome, there was no fault in that performance. It was amazing.