Trap: A Review

 

TRAP

Trap strikes me as a good idea for a film that stretched itself out longer than it should have. While perhaps some fun can be had if one does not think much of it, by the end of the film you wonder if perhaps less would have been more.

Cooper (Josh Hartnett) is mostly thrilled to take his daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to see her favorite singer in concert. As such, Cooper seems to endure much so that Riley can celebrate seeing Lady Raven (Saleka Night Shyamalan) perform all her hits. Cooper does his best to please Riley and steer her away from Jody's mom (Marnie McPhail-Diamond), who is currently Riley's frenemy. 

Cooper quickly sees that there is an unusually high amount of police presence at the Lady Raven concert. He is puzzled, but not too alarmed despite the shadowy presence of Dr. Josephine Grant (Hailey Mills), whom he soon finds is an FBI profiler. Lady Raven merchandise seller Jamie (Jonathan Langdon) soon fills Cooper in on what is meant to be a big secret: the serial killer known as The Butcher is suspected of being at the concert. The entire show is a trap.

No one, however, knows what Cooper knows: that HE is The Butcher. He is currently holding someone hostage in one of his safe houses, watching with delight as the victim is trapped and unable to get out. Now all Cooper has to do is escape the dragnet built around the Lady Raven concert while keeping a confused Riley out of the loop. Part of that impromptu plan is getting Riley to be Lady Raven's "Dream Girl", an audience member selected to dance on stage with our pop princess.

Will Cooper get away with it? Will he be able to outwit our chanteuse and come out triumphant, or will Cooper's luck finally run out?

While watching Trap, I was reminded, curiously enough, of when I went to see Stevie Nicks and Billy Joel in concert earlier this year. In a bit of a humble brag, I too, like Cooper, managed to get floor seats, though I imagine the Lady Raven concert tickets would have been more expensive. Trap, I think, could have and probably would have worked if it had kept to what I think was the film's original premise of keeping everything contained within the Lady Raven concert. Once we finish the concert, however, Trap pretty much falls apart.

Writer/director M. Night Shyamalan, who also cameos in the film, could have done one of two things. He could have let Cooper escape, or he could have had him captured at the Lady Raven concert. Instead, Shyamalan opted for something else: he kept Lady Raven in the movie and kept the story going into the night.

As a side note, I am a bit puzzled as to why the Lady Raven concert, complete with an opening act of Poppa's Boots and a couple of guest appearances from other performers, ended in the daytime. Trap continues to where we see Lady Raven basically taken hostage, then forcing herself to Cooper's home, then being held hostage again, and finally escaping, though Cooper escapes as well. Despite running around an hour and a half, Trap felt longer once we left the arena. 

Once the concert is over and Cooper manages to evade arrest, Trap seems to run out of ideas. As such, it opts to place a lot of the acting burden on Saleka Shyamalan, which was a terrible mistake. Saleka has very large eyes that should be expressive. However, she shows that she is no Anjelica Huston in Trap, giving a thoroughly blank performance. She should be terrified when Cooper cooly informs her that he is The Butcher and will kill his hostage should she try to call for help. Instead, there was nothing there. 

When she locks herself in the Cooper's family restroom, swiping Cooper's phone from him, she reaches out to her fans to help find Spencer, the young man held prisoner. Apart from being not acted by Saleka, this plot point reminded me of all things the 2014 remake of Annie, where the title character similarly used social media to update her status when she was abducted. 

Over and over again, Saleka was a drain in Trap, and Shyamalan should have hired an actual actress or a young Broadway performer who could carry the dramatic moments. She was fine when performing, not good but fine. It was when she was not that it became glaring obvious how bad Saleka was in the film.

As another side note, why she opted to be alone with him is a puzzle. 

There were other moments in Trap that I found very odd. I do not know why Shyamalan insisted on shooting Hailey Mills mostly from behind. Did Pollyana traumatize him so much that he could not give her much screen time? Was he upset that Mills received a special Juvenile Academy Award in 1960 and his daughter Saleka never will? Shyamalan was very fond of having other actors speak directly to the camera, yet for some reason Mills never did.

I also found Langdon's Jamie to be nothing more than an exposition spouting figure. I figure that the only reason he informed Cooper of this manhunt was because the plot required Cooper to be aware of it. A mid-credit scene where we see Jamie's mix of confusion, shock and almost delight at having met and helped The Butcher is strange. 

For my part, I also wondered if there was simply an easier way for the police to be tipped off that Cooper could be The Butcher. The entire premise of having the police find a receipt for a Lady Raven ticket seems rather convoluted. If one suspected Cooper of being The Butcher, why not just call the police and inform them that Cooper may be The Butcher? 

According to Dr. Grant, there are 20,642 attendees to the Lady Raven concert, with 3,000 of them being men who could be The Butcher (I suppose not counting the various people who work the concert itself or the venue). I do not know if the police could legally hold any man who could be the serial killer from leaving the venue, but I digress.

I am puzzled over why Shyamalan directed everyone to be so openly insincere. For all the praise Josh Hartnett has been getting, I found him to be deliberately fake in his performance. I figure that was the intent: to show his total insincerity, but it did not sit well with me. I suppose that I am meant to admire how Cooper will find a way to escape, but I did not have enough interest in whether he did, let alone how. 

I think I would have liked Trap better if it were shorter and gave less screen time to Saleka Shyamalan. It is not terrible, but it could have been better. The songs were fine I suppose, so there's that. 

DECISION: D+