Review of Trap (2024)

Like the Butcher's victims, this movie should've been cut in half.

I think Trap’s premise is much more interesting than its cheesy poster makes it sound. Cooper, a devoted dad and cheerful firefighter, lives a double life as “The Butcher”, a serial killer who violently mutilates his victims. He attends a concert by Lady Raven (who’s some kind of Lady Gaga/Taylor Swift analogue) with his daughter Riley, because he’s a good dad, but the FBI have anticipated that he’ll be in attendance and have sealed off every entrance with police officers. He’s usually an incredibly organized and prepared killer, but at the concert, he’s caught off guard and has to find a way out through the FBI cordon with nothing but his wits and his charisma, all while ensuring that Riley (who doesn’t know anything about his nocturnal activities) doesn’t cotton on.

This is a cool premise! It’s a reversal of the usual horror movie plotline where the killer’s the one trapping his victims. Including Riley was a clever touch; it means Cooper can’t wander off for too long or do anything violent in front of her, or she’ll realize he’s the Butcher. And the presence of an innocent adds some emotional stakes. The audience might not be super invested in a deranged serial killer escaping, but they want the innocent little girl who’s freaking out about getting to enjoy her favorite pop star’s concert to stay innocent and happy. The movie’s B-plot, about Riley getting picked on at school and trying to reconcile with her bullies, helps augment that. (I know some critics were annoyed by Cooper repeatedly bumping into the mom of one of the bullies, but I thought it added an extra emotional edge to the action.)

One thing I really like about the initial “escape” sequence is that it’s clearly inspired by the Hitman video game series. Just like Hitman’s protagonist, Cooper has to explore the concert venue, pick up useful items, eavesdrop on side characters to find unique opportunities and weaknesses, and create distractions at opportune times. Stealing keycards, manipulating concert staff into telling him the codeword for getting past the police cordon, and even convincing Lady Raven’s uncle that Riley has leukemia so they would invite her and Cooper backstage where escape is easier. It’s thrilling, action-packed, and very well done. The audience is left half in amazement of Cooper’s cleverness and half in terror of his ruthlessness.

Things fall apart when Cooper threatens Lady Raven into giving him a ride past the police cordon and back to his suburban house. There are multiple points where Lady Raven could’ve gotten Cooper tackled to the ground by police officers but doesn’t - the plot holes start appearing there, and worsen as the story goes on. But I’m not too much of a stickler for plot holes, especially in these kinds of “turn your brain off and enjoy” movie. For me, the problem is that it robs the story of uniqueness. We move from the interesting and dynamic setting of a cop-filled concert arena (what Hitman players would approvingly call “level design”) to an extremely generic suburban area.

There, the story picks up again. Lady Raven shows some pluck and brains, outwitting Cooper and freeing his imprisoned victim as well as siccing on the cops on him (finally!). When he drags her away to dismember her, his own family shows up to stop him, tears in their eyes, and the sight of them in front of his car makes him go into “regular dad” mode, letting Raven go and quietly re-entering the house by himself as SWAT members pull up outside. This would’ve been a wonderful way to end the story - portraying Cooper as torn between the two worlds, and humanizing him by portraying him as being brought down by his own emotional connections.

Instead, Shyamalan makes us sit through nearly an hour more of endless “twists”, where Cooper gets away in increasingly improbable ways. It constantly tries to convince us the story is over, that he’s been finally caught, only to show him slipping away because of some bullshit contrivance. This seriously tested my patience, especially because it de-emphasizes the cool narrative themes about family and humanity that the story previously set up in order to go for “ha ha, serial killer gets away again!”

It’s a dark, corrupted mirror of the concert sequence. Instead of being impressed with Cooper’s resourcefulness, we’re left aghast at the sheer incompetence of the cops chasing him down. The weirdly pacifist SWAT members look like training dummies, constantly treating him with kid gloves and being fooled by the dumbest of ruses. Things come to a head when, at the end, two SWAT members catch him by surprise, while he’s half-sedated, and he still manages to overpower one of them while the other uselessly tazes him. And after that, when they finally take him down, they still let him go around groping random household objects that, surprise surprise, he uses to effect an escape from the police van!

I don’t know why Shymalan does this. I wonder if he got good test audience receptions to the concert escape sequence and became convinced that he should just make a montage of Cooper doing increasingly absurd escapes. But everything after he initially lets Lady Raven go just… doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t work, and it ends up degrading the narrative and themes that the much-better earlier half of the movie sets up.

I give this movie a 4.5/10, mostly on the strength of the concert parts. A lot of online reviewers hated Lady Raven (who’s Shyamalan’s daughter, promoting her own music), but I thought she was actually really good at singing and dancing in this one, and it had the feel of a real pop star. If it had ended halfway, this might’ve been a 9/10. Such a shame!