
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.
