Trap (2024)

I have a lot of mixed feelings about Trap, a film that uses its high concept gimmick to explore the barriers and disconnections in a father/daughter relationship while featuring a real life collaboration between father and daughter and whose previously mentioned high concept gimmick is shaky at best. Trap is at times fascinating and at other times heart pounding while also often being rather shamelessly contrived and inconsistent. In the middle of all this is a fairly intricate and potentially career transforming performance by former heartthrob actor Hartnett who swings for the fences and mostly knocks it out of the park. So overall? A mixed bag like a lot of the director's recent work. 

At the centre of Trap is the story of a father and daughter who in many ways are very average in that white suburban sort of way. I appreciated the way they connected and didn't, the way the film played off its story to look at how we hide things from our children and how we try to carve out an identity for them to grasp which may not be essentially who we are. But the film often tosses that more interesting aspect aside for its killer plot and there are enough weaknesses in the plot itself that  require such expository heavy lifting that its easy to get muddled. 

The film switches gears in the final third and try to pump as much edge of your seat twists and turns as possible into the story that we sort of give up on things the film had been building. The cat and mouse elements near the end are fun but often a bit silly, or more generously melodramatic, but sort of betray the earlier tone of the film. The ending brings these two together a bit as an essential plot twist is connected to the whole father-letting-his-daughter-go-symbolism and Shyamalan does give his main character (you can't really call him a protagonist, especially with his third act transformation into classic horror villain) a moment of grief over losing her. But at that point Trap is another film entirely, one that appears to be trying to set up a sequel??

But I will give credit to Hartnett who plays this layered character in a way that while he remains monstrous we also catch ourselves sutured to him and his twisty turny final day. He's turning into the sort of character actor that is far more interesting to watch than the trajectory his career was on in its early stages and he pulls this off even in light of the script's meanderings. 

Partially because of him and partially because of Shyamalan's innate ability to tell pop corn stories in such a compelling fashion, I found myself falling to their Trap even when it felt a little like it was jumping the shark. I do wish it did more with the father-daughter piece and I wish Shyamalan didn't feel the need to have his film explain everything quite so explicitly, allowing some of his tale to be spun more organically. So while I enjoyed it Trap also annoyed me a little ending up as something interesting to talk about warts and all. 

Trap

Starring: Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue, Saleka Shyamalan, Haley Mills, Allison Pill, Jonathan Langdon, Kid Cudi

Writer/Director: M. Night Shyamalan