Trap (2024)  

Review: written April 2025

Concerted effort fails to compensate for clunky and unlikely dialogue

M. Night Shyamalan has created some real classics – always with a trademark stylised tight form of storytelling, and is known for this.

Trap is a movie, as so often with M. Night Shyamalan movies, with a great hook. When Cooper (Josh Hartnett) treats his daughter to a concert with her favourite pop star (played by Shyamalan’s daughter), he begins to realise that there is a massive police presence, and he finds out they are all there to capture a killer known as ‘The Butcher”. Cooper starts to look worried and look for a way out of the ‘trap’ that has been set. I like the concept.

Alas, it is probably the only thing about the movie I actually did like. For a director who has a track record of cleverly stylised storytelling and cinematography, the movie feels oddly flat, both visually and dramatically. The acting is forced, with the cast hampered by clunky unreal dialogue and unlikely actions. Even the concert itself doesn’t feel real – supposedly a pop sensation, the crowd seems to wander in and out of the main auditorium, with fans taking breaks ‘ while they set up for the next song’, and vast crowds milling about around the shops and food vendors while the concert is on… it never feels quite real. An artificial contrivance, much like everything else about the movie.

With the dialogue, plot contrivances and setting not feeling real, it’s pretty hard to engage and care enough to get any kind of thrill or enjoyment out of proceedings. People react in ways you cant imagine they would, from an overly sharing vendor sharing the secret behind the show after meeting Cooper for less than a minute, to the pop star “Lady Raven” making some highly unlikely choices, which I won’t share for fear of plot spoiling.

The movie moves on from the venue well before the end, and what little sense of claustrophobia existed then evaporates, along with my waning interest.

If Sixth Sense showed Shyamalan could be a genius, its movies like this that show he’s at best a very inconsistent one.

Don’t fall into the Trap – avoid.