By Marc S. Sanders
The devil is in the details and when you are watching an M Night Shyamalan film it’s transparent enough to know the writer/ director has a penchant for disregard. He’ll put the two by fours together but he doesn’t hammer the nails into place treating his structure with less sturdiness than a house of cards.
His latest thriller Trap gains from a respectable, though nothing great, performance by Josh Hartnett as a psychotic serial killer named Cooper, also known as The Butcher. However, Shyamalan takes away the actor’s credibility by allowing his portrayal to make unbelievable escapes while also being granted an ability to eavesdrop on people while attending a loud pop/rock concert with his pre-teen daughter, Riley (Ariel Donoghue).
Cooper and Riley have a great father/daughter relationship. She’s beyond thrilled to see her favorite singer, Lady Raven (Saleyka Shyamalan, the director’s real-life daughter), live on stage. He’s thrilled to accompany her while munching on stadium snacks and granting the dutiful empathy she needs from middle school drama. Cooper only gets alarmed though when he sees an overwhelming amount of police officers and FBI agents roaming all over the stadium. He asks some questions and learns that this event is being used as a means to capture the infamous killer on the loose known as The Butcher. Now Cooper must play a game of cat and mouse by evading the authorities while not alarming Riley.
Once again, Shyamalan has an enticing set up, but then he doesn’t deliver. First it’s hard to swallow Hartnett’s character listening in on conversations happening yards away down hallowed hallways, or even backstage where Lady Raven’s voice is blaring through stadium speakers while she’s dancing and singing in front of thirty thousand fan girls. Reader, I saw Sting in concert performing one of the quietest songs imaginable, “Fields Of Gold,” and I still could not hear my wife ask me to get her a Coke when she was standing right next to me.
Midway through the film it only gets more ridiculous and even corny as Lady Raven ends up at the family home where Cooper’s wife (Alison Pill) and children become enamored with the celebrity playing piano in their living room. Then there is an overly long scene meant to offer terrifying suspense when a character locks herself in the bathroom. Then it’s back to Raven’s limo and then onto a new house and then back to the first house.
The structure of Shyamalan’s script seems to always paint itself into a corner. So what does the writer do? If he’s trapped with no idea, well he just deepens the corner further and further. He defies his blueprint, and pushes those two by fours further and further out.
All of it is hard to digest. Cooper needs to escape a limousine surrounded by swarms of both fans and police officers. Cut to the next shot and Josh Hartnett’s character is walking away from the commotion unbeknownst to everyone else who stayed glued to the doors and windows of the limo. Excuse me but none of the car doors ever opened. I didn’t even see the sunroof open. Yet, the film insists the guy escaped from the vehicle. So just go with it. OKAY???
The irony of a film called Trap is that the filmmakers could not even figure out the traps they devised. Therefore, they’ll just disregard offering up the sleight of hand and move along.
No good magician insists his audience trust him when he says that his assistant who stepped in the box has disappeared. A good magician, or even a bad magician, is at least smart enough to know that we need to see it for ourselves.
2 UNPAID MOVIE CRITICS!!!! 