Trap (2024) - Movie Review
What if I told you that I’m an M. Night Shyamalan fan?
Woah there girl, before you start throwing his abject failures at me, let me expound.
I like M. Night, because he takes risks. He doesn’t stick to the same, stale formula again and again, with the same lead actor—with a runtime that balloons movie to movie. He tries new techniques, storytelling styles, and yes—oftentimes fails.
However, it’s the successes that I stick around for.
For every few The Village, The Happening, and Glass there’s a single Split or Devil.
Yeah, it’s a longshot that it’s gonna be good, but I hate myself just enough to keep coming back for me.
Watching an M. Night Shyamalan movie is like playing Russian Roulette—You either get an adrenaline rush or scrambled brains—there’s no inbetween.
However, I think Shammy may have broken me. This film is so fucking bad, I think I might burn my copy of Unbreakable.
Let’s Discuss.
Trap is a 2024 thriller brought to us by the aforementioned writer / director M. Night Shyamalan.
The film focuses on blue collar, fireman Cooper as he takes his daughter to see her favorite (Taylor Swift-Style) musician. But as they enter the venue, they start to see some concerning signs, including a dozen SWAT trucks, and heavily armed guards at every entrance and exit. As the concert progresses. Cooper realizes that they’re pulling men from the audience with force, and he knows there’s something insidious afoot. He must escape before the concert ends, or else.
It was hard to summarize this movie, because it sucks so bad.
This is a film that is a level of bad that there’s no redeeming quality. This is unadulterated shit.
SPOILERS – Because you shouldn’t watch this trash.
Within fifteen minutes of the film’s opening, the entire twist of the film is revealed. The concert is staged, because the FBI found a receipt in an empty apartment, an apartment with no fingerprints or any other signs of crime, that they think a serial killer was using as a safehouse. So, they spent millions of taxpayer dollars to setup the most haphazard, bullshit sting in history—oh and the FBI informed concert staff? Are you fucking kidding me?
These types of stings have been done before, in real life, and they were super-efficient and much less obvious. Just look at the Washington D.C.’s NFL raffle scam where they lured in and back multiple longtime on the run criminal through sending out mailers and setting up a fake desk in a lobby.
This giant sting makes 0 sense, especially when you consider that police budgets are at the lowest they’ve ever been in many cities.
But that aside, the set-up could have been fun—if Cooper hadn’t been revealed immediately as the serial killer without any set-up, character building, or prior knowledge of the crimes. We never actually understand what Cooper’s M.O. is—they say that he kills men and women, which my TRUE CRIME brothers and sisters will agree—Almost never happens. Serial killers are creatures of habit, and normally fixate on a specific victim type due to the triggering event that led to their awakening their dark urges.
Again, let’s ignore these logic lapses as well.
If the film had stuck to the rules set-up in the first few minutes, the ticking clock conundrum, it would have been a fun popcorn movie. But the fact that it breaks its own rules again and again is what seals it as an unwatchable mess.
They set the ticking clock and Cooper escapes, okay—I can live with that. What I can’t live with is the additional 20-30 minutes after he escapes where we have to sit through a slow, plodding attempt to shoe-in more story and make the audience care about the serial killer’s family—who we haven’t seen or heard mention of the entire film! For fucks sake, they never said why the FBI knew he would be at the concert, and yet there’s an exposition dump about his wife suspecting him of an affair and finding his empty apartment, which made her all the sudden realize he’s this mysterious serial killer who’s M.O. is never detailed, so we have no idea what he’s capable of, other than cutting up one dead body?
My viewing partners started throwing popcorn at the screen at this point.
But that wasn’t even the worst part of this dumpster fire, no. It’s the massive part of the film devoted to the director’s daughter, Saleka. Yes, the pop star who we’re forced to watch perform multiple full songs with a terrible stage show that looked like it was put together by a Highschool A/V club, and who attended the J.Lo school of whisper acting is Saleka Shyamalan.
Her character is the absolute stupidest thing about this movie.
Set aside the horrible logic this movie has shown already—an FBI profiler telling vending staff at an arena their entire plan to catch an elusive serial killer and all that…
Cooper uses the Popstar to escape in her limo, not knowing she is working undercover for the FBI! Yes, this is like if Taylor Swift decided to go undercover and fight the bad guys. Not only is the pop star in on the planning and running of the trap, but she also risks her life to try and save some guy on Cooper’s phone.
No Popstar would do this. The FBI also wouldn’t include one in their plans other than as a set-up. This is so illogical and unbelievable that it destroys any goodwill the opening of the film provided. Even if someone like Taylor Swift did want to do something like this, they’re dozens of publicists, lawyers, business managers, agents, and record label would never let the FBI even get close to speaking to the musician.
And before you jump on me for what would I know?—I was a celebrity concierge for 10 years, I was a relocation manager with clients like Tesla, Disney, and the NFL as clients. I have plenty of experience working / talking to celebrities. None of them would even consider participating in something like this—because not only would their life be at risk—it would be their fans at risk. Think about it, you’d be locking up thousands of young girls with a brutal monster. No matter how many cops you have—an arena has so many places to hide—I digress.
Much less let her in on their entire plan and loop her into the FBI’s activities after she’s been dismissed.
Its obvious M Night was getting his daughter a SAG card here, because this movie really pushes his daughter on the screen at the expense of everything else.
If not for the AI written, Tarot, this would be the worst script of the year so far.
It’s also obvious, due to the awful camera work, that M Night didn’t work fulltime on this one. It’s long been rumored that his last few films were directed by some of his students—it’s pretty obvious here. The film looks cheap, slapped together, and the poor lighting design does it no favor.
The soundtrack is also almost entirely the debut album of Saleka Shyamalan… so it’s not winning any awards either.
Avoid this like the plague.
