“30,000 fans. 300 cops. 1 serial killer. No escape.
A father and teen daughter attend a pop concert, where they realize they’re at the center of a dark and sinister event.” – Letterboxd
It dawned on me as I watched this movie that even though I know a lot about most of his movies (mainly his early work), I have only seen 3 of M. Night Shyamalan’s movies, including this one, and literally only one I would consider good (Unbreakable), and two of the worst movies I’ve ever seen in Avatar and this movie. Yeah, when me and my gf saw the trailer for this a couple of years ago, we thought it would be goofy bad, and yeah, we laughed a lot.
If you’ve seen the trailer for this movie then you’ve pretty much seen all the movie has to offer, minus having to endure 90 minutes of stupidity. Cooper, a serial killer, takes his daughter to a concert that turns out to be a trap set to catch him. And immediately, there is just so much wrong with that. Even under our current leaders and administration, I don’t even think they would endanger the lives of over 20k people to set a trap like this. Not to mention the overwhelming logistics of it all, because not only are the FBI, SWAT team, and local police involved. But so are the stadium employees, the artists, their management, I’d assume the record label, and the venue for sure as well. That is just a logistical legal nightmare that’s hard for me to wrap my head around, especially because, get this, they don’t know what he looks like! And! They weren’t even certain he would be there.
Seriously, early in the movie we see him start to get paranoid by the police presence, of course an employee ends up spilling the beans about the whole thing too, and I’ll get to this movie basically being a goofy ass hitman knockoff later, but he eventually gets a walkie that allows him to hear in on the coms and his face when he realizes that they are basically going off nothing but the fact that he would most likely be here is insane. They don’t even have a license plate number; they just have an assumption based on his crime profile that he would be driving a black car. There are so many black cars in the world! I’m at a loss. There is literally a scene where, after he steals a key card from an employee, he walks into a break room and stumbles upon a SWAT unit being debriefed again, and after more SWAT members enter after him, he literally just walks through the crowd of officers, saying excuse me, going to the coffee shop machine and offers them coffee.
I had to pause and just awe at how stupid this movie was so many times that it almost took two hours to finish, on top of it feeling so long already. The writing is genuinely awful. It’s not just the plot either. The dialogue is bad. Having gone to two concerts in my life, one at a smaller venue and the other at the United Center for Lady Gaga. Initially, the concert environment seemed pretty spot on minus all the cops (really, there were so many cops and people getting dragged out. No way this wouldn’t have caused a panic or a crowd surge), but as the movie went on, I was just scratching my head. There was an intermission?? Maybe two?? Loads of people just walking around the stadium while you could hear the concert still going on?? Stuff like that is just unbelievable. But it was a shock to both my girlfriend and me that only half of this movie is spent at the concert. The second half of this movie is still more of the same, maybe even goofier. No definitely goofier seeing Cooper do just ridiculous things. There are moments at the end that are good though among the mess.
Josh Hartnett is so goofy in most of this movie. Really, everyone is, but it’s just funny. He plays this ocd killer with a monster inside him. And what makes some scenes so jarring is that he has moments where it works. Where he’s genuinely kinda scary. I could see him playing a character like this and it working in a better movie with a better script and direction. But here he’s mostly cartoonishly goofy. And my god, that ending scene was straight out of a TikTok cringe compilation. Just by virtue of his being the less stupid character in this movie, he had me rooting for the serial killer. Also I don’t know if Josh Hartnett’s eyes are naturally that dark, but there are some scenes where he genuinely feels scary mainly because of the darkness in his eyes. So that’s something.
The daughter was fine. The singer was as well. Didn’t know that was M Night’s daughter, but she did okay in her role. She can sing, but the performances left something to be desired. Um, Russ is in this movie, Kid Cudi too, so that’s something. And the devil himself had the nerve to make himself a character in this god-forsaken movie. At least he can act, but just seeing M. Night’s face made me so angry.
On the more positive side, the wife is actually really damn good in this movie. Like she’s barely in it until the end, but at the end she acted her ass off. Both her and Josh Hartnett. That last scene with them was actually so tense and kinda powerful (despite the ass pull), but of course it’s immediately followed by some goofy ass scene right after.
But then there’s the goofy FBI director/ wanna be criminal minds cast member. Who just stands and looks lost and confused most of the movie. Being the mastermind behind this plan. I don’t even want to talk about her. What a goofy character.
The camera work is so… interesting? Like, there are some really fun/interesting/intense shots in this movie. As I said before, they even nailed the feel of a major concert (initially). But then there are just weird choices, close-ups, and focused shots. For some reason, he loved the shot of the Cooper’s face being like halfway off the screen menacingly, and it always looked goofy.
So yeah, look, Trap is a goofy, awful movie that probably should’ve never seen the light of day. I hate this movie. It is so stupid, so dumb. But I did have “fun” watching it and laughing at it. And it gives me a laugh whenever I think about it. So that’s worth something, I guess? There are some moments in here, and maybe with better writing, script, direction, almost everything, you could make a good movie out of this, but uh yeah, that’s a lot.
Trap – 1/10
