KV: Twenty twenty-two was a big year – it saw the death Queen Elizabeth, the end of the Morrison government, the world population ticking over 8 billion, a head of lettuce outlasting the tenure of a British Prime Minister, and a bunch more horrible things that don’t bear mention in a movie review.  Not least of these notable events was the advent of the neologism “nepo baby,” popularised in a viral Vulture article. While he might be two years late to the party, M. Night Shyamalan and his daughter, Saleka Shyamalan, make a brazen entry into the nepo baby canon with Trap.

Trap is a thriller that follows Cooper (Josh Hartnett), a serial killer known as “the Butcher,” as he and his preteen daughter, Riley (Ariel Donoghue), attend a stadium concert that turns out to the be the titular trap. For large sections of the film, though, this storyline feels like an afterthought, as the narrative gives way to long sections of musical performances by Lady Raven, played by Saleka Shyamalan, M Night’s (admittedly very musically talented) daughter. These excessively long diversions on the slow march towards a flaccid quasi-twist made for a disappointing watch, rescued only by an entertaining performance from Hartnett. Zoe, could you take us through the set up?

ZA: I can, though it won’t really be a complete account of the substance of this film without a full set list from the Lady Raven gig. Cooper has all the trimmings of a Good Dad, rewarding Riley’s good grades by taking her to favourite artist’s show, having heart-to-hearts about the girls at school, enthusiastically recording Riley joining misc. other children doing a TikTok style dance, normal Good Dad stuff. Cooper isn’t like other dads though. Not only is he hulking about a foot taller than everyone else at the concert, but he is also a serial killer being hunted by the FBI. And unfortunately for pretty much everyone, this seven-year hunt has culminated at the Lady Raven concert, due to a key piece of evidence indicating with certainty that the Butcher will be in attendance. 

Cooper, noticing the desperately indiscrete operation, enters Butchermode and tries to work various angles and manipulations to escape the titular trap of the stadium, interspersed with ample time enjoying Lady Raven’s back catalogue. Though Riley is increasingly aware of her dad’s strange behaviour. 

Through his devious machinations he gains access to employee-only areas, the police radio channel and backstage and enters into a cat-and-mouse type scenario with the head of the FBI operation, an inexplicably elderly British profiler, Dr. Josephine Grant (Hayley Mills). Cooper is simultaneously hounded by Grant and the sporadic spectre of his mother, reaffirming M. Night’s cinematic assertion that ultimate fear is elicited by spooky/mean old women. 

I think that gives you the bones of it, Katie. What are your thoughts?  

KV: Boy, this isn’t that good. Cooper’s scheming to evade capture isn’t that satisfying to watch because it only makes him seem clever in comparison to the rest of the bozos populating the film, some of whom are made borderline offensively stupid in an effort to add some comic levity into the otherwise drab characterisations. Most of the ideas here feel half-baked, with Shyamalan gesturing at Cooper’s childhood trauma and mummy issues, without fully fleshing out why they matter. As noted above, there is some attempt to draw a connection between the sexy-voiced older lady profiler and Cooper’s mother, but it is unclear to what end.

This is predominantly a movie about parent-child relationships, but what it’s saying about them is uncertain, and the one that makes the biggest impression is probably the one between Shyamalan and his daughter, whose acting chops might have been insufficient to land her a leading role in a film if not for her family connections. Cooper and Riley’s relationship serves as an interesting foil to the Shyamalan father/daughter relationship; where Cooper tries unsuccessfully to keep his family and murdery life separate, Shyamalan has thrown business and family together in a jumble of getaways and alternative R&B ballads, I would argue also unsuccessfully. It’s an odd saying-the-quiet-part-loud choice to feature a father/daughter relationship so prominently in a movie that it seems clear to me is a little more than a pretext for getting as many eyes and ears as possible on Saleka Shyamalan’s musical career.

On a completely different note, some of the dialogue seems outright lazy. In one exchange, Riley chides her father for not using the term “crispy” correctly, which as far as my google and TikTok searches have revealed is not even real Gen Alpha slang. This suggests to me that Shyamalan has really lost his rizz and is becoming skibidi toilet, no cap (???).

ZA: I feel like this is the first time in our writing partnership where we are going to disagree (albeit on a single point). M. Night has a history of writing children at the centre of his narratives (for example, The Sixth Sense, Signs, The Visit, Knock at the Cabin, Old, the list goes on) without having ever seemed to have communicated with a child before. The dialogue and characterisations of children in the Shyamaverse have always been divorced from the way any young person has or will ever behave in the world as we know it. M. Night is at his best in the realm of the fantastical, where the bizarre and uncanny nature of his characters is obscured by wild plot and world building, and is consequently forgivable. The only fantasy in the world built in Trap is that Saleka Shyamalan is doing her own Eras tour, and the otherwise frill-less real world setting is a stage for highlighting M. Night’s difficulty in rendering believable characters.  

That said, I must commend Hartnett for doing the best he can in a difficult situation (being in this movie). Cooper is suitably endearing and cringe as his Dad Jeckyll and brings fun and intensity to his Butcher Hyde, and we all appreciated and were confused when he took his shirt off. I found myself rooting for him, and certainly longed for his presence on screen during the extended musical bits. I cannot believe the Hollywood sickos have done it again and laundered another secret musical movie (see, or rather don’t see: Mean Girls and Wonka) into our cinemas. We were lured in with a promise of a Harnett-led thriller, and were subjected to a middling plot legitimising the creation of the Saleka Shyamalan concert movie. That is the real Trap. 

 

Trap is currently playing in cinemas.