Every time a trailer for a new M. Night Shyamalan movie is released, I’m always willing to give the director another chance, despite the fact that it’s been a very long time since he’s made a truly great film. Last time, he earned some points with Knock at the Cabin, an effective and fairly straightforward paranoid thriller that avoided a lot of the problems and challenges his films often face – it didn’t fall apart in the end. Trailers for Trap, a comeback vehicle for early aughts heartthrob Josh Hartnett, intrigued me, especially due to a reveal that feels like one of his signature twists, revealed in the trailer. You could watch that trailer and think, where could this go given what we already know? And the answer, unfortunately is, nowhere terribly interesting. 

Cooper (Hartnett) is a father taking his teenage daughter (Ariel Donoghue) to a concert of pop sensation Lady Raven (Shyamalan’s daughter Saleka). He notices enhanced police presence and asks a merch worker what’s going on. The police know a serial killer known as The Butcher is at this concert, and the FBI has set a trap for him at this concert, where he cannot make it out. And Cooper is The Butcher! 

Shyamalan is attempting a Hitchcockian suspense thriller here, and we do have individual moments of suspense that work effectively. Overall, I didn’t have a bad time watching Trap, although it has falls into a lot of the signature Shyamalan traps (I’m sorry) that have plagued many of his films over the past few decades. The pace is good, the setup is strong, but it feels like Trap limps its way to the finish line when we should be on the edge of our seats, waiting for the big finale. The story is full of twists, and it doesn’t go exactly where you might be expecting it to go, but then it ends about four different times and it keeps going and keeps explaining things when it doesn’t need to. This might make a great short film or, say, an 80-90 minute movie, but it becomes convoluted and overstays its welcome a bit at 105 minutes. 

What we have here is a cat and mouse game where the audience is asked to root for a serial killer, and hope he makes it out of this trap and presumably gets to kill again. And there are problems with that premise, but luckily Josh Hartnett is so skilled at playing the different levels that exist to this character. He’s charismatic and lovely when he needs to be, but there’s always that slight tinge of madness in his eyes, and he’s exciting to watch throughout. Saleka Shyamalan, who actually wrote music for this film and performs it, gets a bigger role in the second half, and she’s desperately trying to elevate this beyond a nepotism vanity project. And she’s actually a good actor. I was impressed. Her music is less impressive, but as an actress, I enjoyed some of the choices she made.

A part of the mental contract you sign when you sit down to watch an M. Night Shyamalan movie is that you have to accept the outlandishness and let it go when the story gets far fetched. And accept that nobody in any Shyamalan film talks like a human being. The dialogue can be so stilted and so awkward (this is a particularly egregious problem in 2021’s Old), that it’s almost impossible to take this as seriously as they’re aiming for. And each situation our character finds himself in is increasingly more asinine and unrealistic, that even I had some trouble letting that go and enjoying the movie for what it was. It almost feels like he’s playing a video game and he has to dodge each obstacle, and after we hit the third act, the tension that has built up evaporates into thin air. And the movie keeps explaining things to you.

Overall, I wouldn’t say Trap is a total dud, but it is a waste of potential. I would say it’s a fun time to spend at the movies in the dead of summer, parts are enjoyable and Josh Hartnett is really good here. And yet, I also think this is a movie you will forget about very soon after you watch it. As the second part of Shyamalan Nepotism Summer, after his daughter Ishana’s disastrous The Watchers, I’ll certainly say this is a stronger film, even if that is damningly faint praise. Trap is a bad movie that I almost recommend you see anyway, because it’s not completely terrible and it’s an interesting idea, even if it is butchered in the execution.