Ever feel like there are too many police barricades at a live concert show? Ever feel like the police are watching your every step at a live concert show, knowing you have committed a crime? Ever feel like pretending to be a food worker at a live concert show after turning up the heat on those fryers and throwing in some glass bottles while watch a poor worker get third degree burns? Ever wonder what it is like to push a young girl down a small flight of stairs just to see what the police might do? Ever wonder why your daughter, an avid fan of a superstar singer at that same live show, keeps asking you, "Are you okay, Dad?" I could ask that same question, and a host of others, to the director of this movie "Trap," M. Night Shyamalan.
"Trap" is not a movie - it is an idea in search of a movie. Shyamalan has a neat little concept about a serial killer known as the Butcher attending a live concert with his daughter (Ariel Donoghue), unaware at first that the whole concert is actually a trap to find him! As ridiculous as it sounds, that could work as a thriller exercise about how many different methods the Butcher employs in seeking to escape from the concert. As for the revelation that the concert gig is a trap, it would work if it wasn't revealed until halfway through the movie. Unfortunately a worker who sells concert shirts decides it is okay to tell the Butcher (Josh Hartnett) about the plan. The Butcher knows something is up prior to being told the movie's singular twist (mistakenly revealed in the trailers) because hundreds of police officers are everywhere, including hundreds of FBI agents surrounding the whole area. There is one nifty moment where the Butcher steals a police scanner with an earpiece and keeps tabs on what the police and FBI are communicating to each other. Wouldn't it have been grandly thrilling and suspenseful if halfway through the movie, the Butcher steals the police scanner and discovers that they are searching for him?
Josh Hartnett is flatly over-the-top in this movie - he is not believable for one second as a brutal serial killer. He plays the part well of a doting father, but that is it. Every calculated move he makes in one incredulous scene after another is overplayed and obvious - this guy sticks out like a sore thumb. Anyone spending 5 minutes with this smirking guy would know he's the killer and the fact that nobody does simply makes them stupid, including a moment where he pretends to be an employee and enters a room full of SWAT officers! A mildly spine-tingling scenario involving the superstar singer, Lady Raven (played with conviction by Shyamalan's daughter, Saleka Night Shyamalan, an actual singer) and the Butcher left me wanting to know how it was going to resolve itself. It takes two more endings to get there and so many damn contrivances and sheerly unbelievable scenes of the Butcher somehow managing to make himself disappear and reappear at will when confronted by the FBI (watch the movie and tell me that is not the case), that all I could do was laugh at this mildly entertainingly bad movie. Are you okay, M. Night Shyamalan?
