Tag: Knock At The Cabin

[EXPRESSO] Trap (2024) | Dad Of The Year

I wasn’t completely sold on this one, since the trailer “spoils” the supposed twist of the movie, so i wondered if M. Night was gonna do on an anti-twist spree following Knock At The Cabin… the result being yes but also no.

The premise sees a dad bring his daughter to a concert of her favourite singer, Lady Raven (played by actual singer and daughter of M. Night, Saleka Shyamalan), and after noticing a lot of security around, he manages to learn of the entire concert actually being an elaborate trap to finally catch an infamous serial killer called “The Butcher”, to finally catch… him.

There’s actually more to it, not really an outlandish twist, but one that actually makes sense and explains a lot of questions, plus many unexpected turns which i won’t spoil, without making you feel like a fool for investing yourself in the concert part, which it’s already quite intriguing in itself, as you wanna see how the killer is gonna try to outsmart the security measures as the police and expert profiler try to close in on him.

The killer itself it’s not quite original in terms of motivations or writing, but Josh Harnett’s performance perfectly sells his dual persona of loving father and elaborate serial killer.

This helps as a “crutch” to the otherwise clever but not that plausible premise, one stretched out in a way that never makes the film proper scary or tense, especially in the final part that drags on and lead to a sequel bait ending (really could have done without that) but undeniably intriguing as you wanna see how it’s gonna play out.

It’s about as flawed as most his films tend to be, but i’d say Trap is mostly good, one of his better ones as of late.

[EXPRESSO] The Watchers (2024) Live Theathre In The Woods

Mr Twister is once again back on the silver screen, and we’re going back to the woods, this time not to hide while people believing to be the Four Horsemen invade your home and impose an improbabile apocalyptic task to you and your family, or to bother the geezers, but to play the sickest livestream event of them all… to an unknown audience.

… oh wait, this is actually written and directed by Inasha Night Shyamalan, one of M. Night’ (with Trap, directed by him, also releasing in 2024) daughters, here at her directorial debut.

The premise sees a girl, Mina, a 28 yo artist, finding herself lost and isolated inside a huge forest in western Ireland, only for her to take refuge in a cottage and unknownly get trapped in there alongside three other people, to be watched at night by some strange creatures dwelling there.

What’s scariest than improv theather to a fussy audience that might just kill you like a fly if it wishes so, after all? Very little, outside of some cosmic horror older than time itself and such.

While there’s definitely a similar imprint to her father, The Watchers doesn’t rely entirely on a last second last act twist to flip around the narrative, i mean, it’s kinda easy to predict partly what the creatures could be (if nothing else for the location), and they don’t throw out some stupid and-or unsatisfying curveball just for the sake of throwing off the audience, so for best or worst it relies more on actually making you care the lore and the plot being interesting in itself.

Still nothing really special despite the clever hook and good casting for what are just functional characters, but honestly i’d say it’s quite the decent watch, especially for a directorial debut.