It’s a TRAP
M Night Shyamalan movies are hit or miss, feast or famine. Can we all agree on that? For every 6th Sense or Signs there’s an Old or Lady In the Water. The Average Dude has long ago stopped getting excited for any MNS movie.
And we all know he likes to throw a twist into the mix. We’re all looking for it, which makes it really tough to deliver a good one. M Night began in the era before streaming. And maybe more than any other writer/director, streaming has done him no favors. A little voice inside my brainbone said to wait for it to come out on Prime or Hulu rather than shelling out dough to see it in the theater.
I should have listened to my inner voice
Father and daughter bonding for a new generation
TRAP, the latest offering by M Night Shyamalan is about a serial killer (Josh Hartinett) dubbed ‘the Butcher’. How original. The Butcher is known for dismembering his victims, reportedly in the most grissly ways. I say reportedly, because MNS spends very little time fleshing out that aspect of the story. Thankfully.
What TRAP spends quite a bit of time on is showing a father attempting to grow his relationship with his tweenage daughter by taking her to the biggest concert event ever! Lady Raven (played by M Night’s daughter, Saleka Shyamalan) is a stereotypical pop mega-star, complete with all the fake stage presence, glitzy showmanship and super-long eyelashes that remind me I need to sweep out the back of my SUV. But more on her later.
Unbelieveable Plot Contrivances #1-3
As the trailer reveals, TRAP pits the hero (???) against the entirity of the law. Somehow, they know he will be at this concert and they are bringing the house.
How do they know this about the villain/hero? The explanation is weak and unimaginative. And ultimately debunked. Why did they choose to TRAP him at a concert, where scores of innocent people – mostly children – can and probably would be harmed physically or emotionally? How would even the entire assembled might of Big City’s Finest hope to capture the bad guy out of a crowd of tens of thousands? Is the surveilance state THAT on point? Not a comforting thought. All that in just in the first 10 minutes.
Hollywood – 1 Average Dude – 0
So you see what I mean here. MNS wants us to overlook a whole lot of red flags and take this movie on a date. And like the optimist I am, I oblige. Because there didn’t seem to be any better options this week, and I think Hollywood planned it that way. Well-played, Hollywood.
I won’ t go on to enumerate all the rest of the crazy sh!t that we are expected to swallow in this movie. I can think of Unbelieveable Plot Contrivances #4-7 without even straining my tired brainbone. Doing that would create spoilers, and up to now, I’ve only exposed the ones that are shown in the trailers. I can tell you that they come at you from nearly every character, relentlessly. Literally nothing in this movie parallels actually life.
And the big M Night Shyamalan twist?
Don’t get me started. I beg of you. I bounce back and forth between incredulity and anger inducing disappointment. With more than a touch of insult.
They weren’t given much to work with
If I try to walk a mile in the character’s shoes, I’m afraid I only got about a football field along before I tire. Part of becoming emotionally connected to a character is relating to them. I shudder to think that there might be a segment of society that can relate to Josh Hartnett’s Butcher. And in fairness to Josh, I don’t think he really could, either. His character was closer to Joe from YOU than Hannibal from Silence of the Lambs. That’s not a good sign when it comes from the titular star of your movie.
But back to Lady Raven
So, with all the glaring holes (you ain’t seen nothin’ yet) in TRAP, the only sane conclusion I can come to is that the movie was intended to showcase M Night Shyamalan’s daughter, Saleka. Okay, I get it. What father doesn’t want to see his child succeed? Or give them a leg up? Trap is Saleka Shyamalan’s acting debut but has several soundtrack credits (all in dad’s movies). From the scenes of Lady Raven on stage, it didn’t feel like the singing or choreography was anything special at all. Certainly sub-Taylor Swift level entertainment. So coming in second to Josh Hartnett always meant she was destined to lose. Cal Naughton Jr. did it better.
So kudos to M Night for trying to help his daughter, and phooey on M Night for shlepping out this stain of a movie to do it. Poop to you, sir. I say again, poop.
As is my tradition
Like I always say, I try to find something good in every movie I see. And for TRAP, I can say this: with all the ham-fisted plot contrivances and milquetoast performances, the saving grace (I’m now being generous) was that with each attempt to find a way out, we watched with mild anticipation to see how the Butcher would slip free. It inspired a kind of hope. Not hope that the Butcher would escape justice. More like a hope that we didn’t spend our hard earned money on pooptrash. And, unfortunately, we did.
Oh. I just thought of Unbelieveable Plot Contrivances 8 & 9. They just. Won’t. Stop.
And please…help me out here. It has literally been a quarter century, and nobody is sure how to pronounce m Night’s last name. Somebody set me straight. It’s like trying to sound out Brett Favre’s name. Ugh.