When
I saw the preview for M. Night Shyamalan’s latest offering, Trap, my first
thought was how would Josh Hartnett do as the main character. The second
concern was how much of this film was going to be centered around the actual concert
Cooper (Hartnett) was going to with his daughter Riley. Riley is played by Ariel Donoghue who is a
fine actress from Australia who I had never heard of before this so kudos to
her for a job well done. Hartnett
(Oppenheimer, The Virgin Suicides, and Black Hawk Down) does a decent job
playing both a caring and loving father (which you can tell he really is) as
well as a cold blooded serial killer named The Butcher.
Now
I didn’t know at the time that Lady Raven is played by Shyamalan’s daughter
Saleka. Saleka is also an up and coming
pop singer like in the movie. The film
features lots of songs by her. LOTS OF THEM! OK, get it out now if you want; go ahead and
yell “nepotism” and then we can move on.
Good, now that you have that out of your system I’ll say this as well, I’m
not a fan of Saleka’s music. By far she
is a better actor (she has some scenes where she is not singing) than she is a
pop star; to me at least. After seeing
how much concert is in this movie it proves to me the only reason this film
exists is to give Saleka a jumping off point for her music career. So for that I hope it works because as a
crime drama thriller it mostly falls flat.
The
films runtime is around an hour and forty-five minutes. Probably just an hour and fifteen minutes
if you take out the concert parts. So the good scenes are very choppy and not all the non-concert scenes are good. Some seem contrived, and way overdone. I mean if this was such a tightly held onto
secret then there are too many people who know there is a serial killer at the
concert and give zero fucks about it.
Alison Pill (Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Vice, and Milk) plays Cooper’s
wife Rachel who isn’t even in the film until about the last thirty
minutes. Maybe thirty it might be
less. Also starring as Dr. Josephine
Grant, an FBI profiler, is Hayley Mills.
Now I get it Hayley Mills was in The Parent Trap (the original one
from the 60’s not the remake) and here we have The Butcher who is caught in a trap
and he is there being a dad to his daughter so it’s essentially a trap for a
parent. *Insert audible groans here* I’m also going to rip Shyamalan in that for
the first time (at least I think it is the first time) a film he directed “appears”
in Philadelphia but none of it was really filmed anywhere near the city I was
born and raised near. I’m not a Philly
expert, but I friggin’ know Philly when I see it and certainly know when I don’t
see it. So I call Shenanigans on that as
well. So while I was worried about the
film not all of my worries came to fruition but oh boy, the ones that do are
really hard to overlook. A while back I watched Old which is also one of Shyamalan’s films and I didn’t like it much
at all but here’s the thing, it’s not my least favorite M. Night film anymore. This is!
Two slap bracelets out of five.
