While taking his daughter to her favourite pop star’s concert, serial killer Cooper (Josh Hartnett) clocks the intensified security around the venue and grows suspicious.
He quickly realises that his paranoia is justified - the concert is an elaborate ruse to capture him.
Can the ‘Butcher’ escape to slay another day?
I had a lot of fun.
I have a feeling this one won’t hold up on the re-watch.
Trap has such a fun, ridiculous premise.
The whole movie feels like a joke, a comedic bit that just extends and extends and extends until it snaps.
The film manages the trick of imbedding us with the villain’s POV, as we wait to see how he will figure a way out of his predicament.
What surprised me was that the movie is not allied solely to Cooper’s POV.
When he gains power, the film switches to the perspective of the character he has power over.
We are then eager to see how this character manages to outwit this monster.
The film loses steam after this sequence, trying to loop around back to Cooper’s POV.
It is not a terrible button as far as a blackout image, but the suspense has drained away by the time we get to it.
While the movie stumbles, Hartnett knows exactly what this movie is - there were a few moments early on where it felt like his forced cheer is a little broad, but the movie is such a cartoon it fits the tone.
When he finally shows his hand and gains power over the movie, he is genuinely terrifying.
Shyamalan’s daughter Saleka is fine as Lady Raven, the pop star our villain’s daughter adores.
While the air goes out of the scenario long before the ending, the best thing I can say about it is that it feels like M Night is having fun. You cannot hate a movie which casts Parent Trap star Hayley Mills as a form of metatextual irony.
And it made me want to go back and watch the recent movies of his that I have missed.
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