Trap (2024)
First screened and reviewed in August 2024
Director: M. Night Shyamalan. Cast: Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue, Saleka Shyamalan, Hayley Mills, Alison Pill, Jonathan Langdon, Marnie McPhail-Diamond, Marcia Bennett, Mark Bacolcol, Scott Mescudi, Russ, M. Night Shyamalan, Vanessa Smythe, Lochlan Miller. Screenplay: M. Night Shyamalan.
Bullet points, because that's what's possible today:
Like a lot of you, I've been jazzed about this premise since the trailer hit, and I still think it's a really inspired way to blend into one scenario the euphoria and the creepy undercurrent of mass-worship concert events. Has anyone tried this before, and if not, why not? Also love the fleeting ways the film exploits the mutual, "Who even is that?" perplexity between parent and child in an outing like this, where the kid's all-in, out-of-body, knows-every-word, needs-to-get-there-now idolatry is as puzzling to Dad as his goofy attempts to connect and ...furtive behavior are to her.
Love that the intense securitization in this scenario did not yield 100 or indeed almost any shots of people staring at monitors, people tracking thermal signals, people combing through on-screen databases... Everything's all about physical negotiation in a well-defined space that most of the audience can feel or intuit in their bones, beyond the sharp mapping on screen. Relatedly: a serial killer film with basically no blood and no mangled bodies on screen. Nifty!
What a pleasure to have this premise executed by a filmmaker who has a consistent knack for where to place the camera and how long to hold a shot. Even when other aspects of Shyamalan's work spiral out into lunacy, he's got good core strength, and the story setup and limited perspective of this one play right to them. Nice to see "Hitchcockian" applied with real warrant for once.
I guess Shyamalan gets to work so often on the condition he keeps costs down, which evidently extends to below-the-line talent. I miss the days, though, when he had creative collaborators that raised everyone's game and deepened my enjoyment, the way Tak Fujimoto and (my god) Eduardo Serra did behind the camera, or Dylan Tichenor in the cutting room. Remember how Ann Roth and James Newton Howard spruced up The Village? All the recent ones feel a little CVS Brand in terms of craft, even if Shyamalan's new, less expensive allies get the job done, as they more or less do here. And fancy hires aren't everything. The one "name" in the technical credits is Call Me by Your Name d.p. Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, who's been such a wizard for Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Miguel Gomes (believe the hype on Grand Tour!), but if anything he's a bit of a disappointment here. Shyamalan's angles and frames are always more interesting than how Sayombhu is shooting anything, though arena lighting is what it is, and I do appreciate the stretch.
The acting is a little wonky. If script, scenario, and tension weren't carrying the day so successfully, I would have minded. Plenty of teen actors would have brought more to the daughter than Ariel Donoghue does, though I did appreciate her believable shy/ecstatic mix when the character suddenly has all eyes on her. Alison Pill doesn't zhuzh things to the level I'd hoped, though she's solid. I was gleeful when I saw Hayley Mills's name in the credits, but I'm sad to say the stunt casting generates nothing, to such an extent that I wondered if her character's unexpectedly peripheral presence was because things were being reshaped around her. Saleka Shyamalan seems more in her groove when she's on stage than when she's elsewhere, but she has some moments even offstage, and I'm still calling that performance a win. Brief shout-out to an actress called Vanessa Smythe who absolutely nails the vibe of a sprightly but efficiency-first tour manager.
As for Hartnett, I see what he's going for with a stilted quality in the first hour: half the time this psychopath is cosplaying as a normie, and the other half he's aiming his arrow at Cool Dad and is missing. But often-ish, he's stiff or awkward in ways I can't write off as a character choice. I was repeatedly recasting with Jason Ritter, and I liked that version even better. Still, what Shyamalan is building around his lead is working so well, I didn't care. Plus when Hartnett isn't "doing" anything, like too obviously wheedling info from a merch salesman (Jonathan Langdon, delightful, including in the credits), or fielding the pushy mom of his daughter's frenemy, his resting demeanor works surprisingly well to suggest incognito aerial killer. Plus plus plus plus plus, he gets a late scene where he's describing his overflowing rage but isn't playing "overflowing rage" but also avoids "robotic suppression of feeling," and he's so great in that scene that he majorly boosts the movie. Not least because we all oughta be looking more at white guys who are passing as chill or whatever but are actually time-bombs of resentment and fury.
I totally considered giving the Saleka Shyamalan songbook a Spotify spin when I get home. Haven't done it yet, but I still might. The charmingly brazen Nepo thing totally works, largely because she's got something! And look, I just love that her dad made a movie about fatherly love that is such a swinging emblem of exactly that.
And now the spoilery stuff...
I absolutely wish the daughter, not the mom, had done the detective work to confirm who her dad is and initiate this whole sting. As the Swifties never stop showing us, fangirls are some mage-level puzzle-solvers! Plus, it would have been such an A++ teen move for her to be like, "My dad's The actual Butcher and I've gotta shut that down, but if he's also my ticket and my ride to my favorite artist's concert, don't think I'm passing that up. You can do both." A perfect fillip, I think, for the screenplay's themes, it's twistiness, and its sense of humor... and at that point, you don't even need a mom. See how I saved the producers some cash? As it is, the daughter just kind of peters out into nothing in the last half-hour. The movie even bypasses an obvious last-minute chance to recover and complicate her around the bicycle.
I also kind of wish Lady Raven had been more of a leader in the sting operation, knowing even better than the profiler that the Butcher would need backstage access to get out (she knows this venue and scenario better than anyone) and knowing that the chink in his cold-logic ruthlessness will be his desire for his daughter to have her all-time best night of fandom. Of course he'll want to sweet-talk her onto the stage as "Dreamer" Girl! That whole concert gimmick could even have been cooked up for this long-game purpose. And, while the film as is does a good job eventually of goosing the audience for assuming Lady Raven is just passive backdrop, I think we could have gone further with that, in ways that might even preclude ever needing to go to the house. Look, I saved the production a lot of money and bother again!
Lastly: if I need a nerves-of-steel pop icon to help mastermind the catching of a killer, especially if she's a co-conspirator in setting the trap and a good improviser when best-laid plans get twisted, my money is on Gaga. And relatedly, we've maybe found our director for the eventual fact-based suspenser about how Nicole Kidman scooted Katie Holmes safely away from Tom Cruise, unless Kitty Green is available, please. Grade:B
(I originally wrote this review on Letterboxd.)
(Also, I have a funny definition of "bullet points.")
