Trap, if anything, shows that M. Night Shyamalan is truly a family man. Of course, the theme of family and parenthood has existed throughout the director’s work since his Hollywood filmmaking debut, Wide Awake. In that film, Shyamalan tells the story of a young boy searching for the meaning of life after the death of their grandmother. When compared to his other works that were more tailored to specific genre conventions, Wide Awake doesn’t really enter the conversation. Yet, even 36 years later, many of the ideas on display from Shyamalan’s entrance to the mainstream are still present—the theme of family, loss and even death. With Trap, M. Night Shyamalan tells a story of parenthood, the confusion and façade of family life and the grimness of murder, all wrapped up in a Hitchcockian package that is one of the director’s absolute best.
M. Night Shyamalan’s Eras Tour
Trap follows Cooper (Josh Hartnett), a father who takes his daughter, Riley (Ariel Donahue), to see Lady Raven (Saleka Shyamalan), a famous pop star. As the two enter the venue and take their seats, Cooper notices a heavy police presence and the unbearable feeling that someone is watching. After buying some merchandise, Cooper gets some intel from a friendly employee who tells him that the police are controlling the area to trap The Butcher, a vicious serial killer potentially at the concert. Who’s The Butcher? Well, that would be Cooper himself. Armed with this information, Cooper finds himself tasked with escaping from the arena and police custody while not bringing too much attention to him and making sure his daughter has the most incredible day of her life.
Watching Trap, it’s hard not to think about Shyamalan as a filmmaker. Originally billed as the next Spielberg, it wasn’t long before Shyamalan went from cinema’s next great director to a name of abuse aimed at his misses and even his hits. The fact is, Shyamalan didn’t have an easy journey through Hollywood. Of course, he still came out of his misses with enough genuine respect for his bold ideas, but his series of high-budget flops also required him to fundamentally change his whole career. After the flop of After Earth in 2013, Shyamalan made The Visit, a film made on a shoestring budget with borrowed money that could’ve placed him in serious debt. As a filmmaker, he took an incredible gamble on his own art and did so with the support of his family. Still, it’s hard not to see that Shyamalan still grapples with this decision even a decade after it transpired.
Charming Chills
The character of Cooper is easily one of Shyamalan’s most complex and exciting just by the sheer fact that he’s so damn likeable. For a film starring a serial killer, it’s unusual to say that you spend much of this actively cheering them on. At the same time, Shyamalan is quick not to make Cooper a one-note character. Before we see the man we call The Butcher, we see a family man trying to connect to his daughter. A brief subplot throughout the film is Riley’s struggles in school with her friends. Multiple times through Trap, Cooper is stopped by a parent of one of Riley’s friends, and here, we see a lot of the overwhelming heartbreak that comes with knowing your daughter is being treated poorly. There’s an inherent divide between a parent and a child caused by generational change, and Shyamalan feels particularly interested in this throughout the film.
Frankly, it’s hard not to see some of M. Night Shyamalan in Cooper throughout Trap. The dark nature of murder here is treated with a certain allure, making Cooper almost giddy with joy. In fact, some of the absolute funniest moments throughout Trap come from Shyamalan’s observation of how easily we take advantage of people’s kindness. A lot of how Cooper navigates this enclosed space is through pure charm, and the film channels this to create a surprisingly comedic tone that works incredibly well. Shyamalan has always brought an immensely playful attitude behind the screen, but here, it’s especially infectious. At the same time, it allows Trap to be surprisingly emotional in some parts, as Shyamalan inevitably turns the film into a personal exploration of his passion for filmmaking and his anxieties about being a father.
A Tale Of Two Halves
Much of the first half of Trap essentially feels like a level from the Hitman video game series. From pushing someone down a flight of stairs to causing multiple distractions to prolong the cat-and-mouse game being played, Cooper wanders through Trap as a ruthless but exciting character to watch on screen. By placing Hartnett into this closed space, Shyamalan has an absolute blast behind the camera as he creates this new playground that feels more tied to his influences than ever. Simply put, Trap is Shyamalan at his most Hitchcockian. By placing his major influence at the heart of the story, however, the film turns into more than a straightforward thriller and a story about bringing generations together through the lens of the thriller genre.
The second half of Trap is a surprising departure from Shyamalan that I was frankly very nervous about. After all, there’s an immense risk to expanding one-location movies, and by losing the inherent claustrophobia tied to the setting, a lot of the film’s tension can be lost. With Trap, however, Shyamalan takes the opportunity to reflect upon himself while translating his narrative into another brand of the thriller genre. There’s a particularly haunting thread here where Shyamalan explores the facade of fatherhood. Throughout, we see Cooper as a charming soul that contrasts with the viciousness of his true character. It’s clear that Cooper’s true passion is in his sadistic desire for murder, but at the same time, Shyamalan doesn’t want you to believe that Cooper isn’t, at the very least, someone who loves his children, and frankly, that’s what makes him so fascinating. Cooper in Trap feels like Shyamalan coming to terms with his own filmmaking career and the inevitable allure that creatives face when building new projects while more responsibilities crop up around them. By wrapping the character around a film that wears many of its influences on its sleeve, Shyamalan builds a bridge between his generation and his children’s generation in a way that feels appropriate and imaginative.
‘Trap’ – Final Thoughts
Trap is M. Night Shyamalan’s Hitchcock tribute wrapped in a reflective package that sees the director navigating fatherhood and the generational divide parents face with their children. At the same time, the film also operates beautifully as an old-school thriller that feels like a genuine breath of fresh air. M. Night Shyamalan pitched Trap as Silence of The Lambs in a Taylor Swift concert, and frankly, it more than delivers in that department. At the same time, it also shows how fantastic Shyamalan is as a director at repackaging his old-school ideas for modern audiences. He may be far from the filmmaker who made Wide Awake, but with Trap, Shyamalan reminds us why his work is still fascinating to dissect, interpret, and even watch.
Trap is now playing in theaters. Check out a trailer below:
