At this point for me M. Night movies land in 1 of 2 categories. 1, Decent and Entertaining enough but I forget about it immediately like 'Cabin in the Woods' 2. Unintentionally Hilarious in a way that only M. Night can deliver like 'Old'. 'Trap' lands in the second category, mostly. It is an M. Night movie in that none of the people in it actually act like real Human Beings. The exposition is unnatural and easily offered up by any character that has some. It really only takes one prompt from someone for a character to start on some long stretch of dialogue explaining the situation or their feelings or other character's motivations. There is one lady who is a professional Profiler, and all of her dialogue made me laugh out loud from either explaining Way too much or predicting exactly what Josh Hartnett's character is doing at that moment because she's such a good Profiler.
I really like Josh Hartnett, I always have. I think he is an underrated talent, and he is the biggest reason I wanted to see this movie. Unfortunately, he is stuck with M. Night's dialogue. I'm sure Hartnett could've played a loving father trying to keep his evil side inside exceptionally well, but it seems M. Night didn't want a nuanced performance he wanted a little ham, and Hartnett delivers but instead of fun it can be hard to watch (cringe worthy) or embarrassing. When he's in "Dad Mode" he does a good job of capturing one of those dads that tries way too hard to please their daughter but the problem with that is those dads are unbearable. And then when he gets to, "Go Dark" it's such a dramatic switch to 'Pure Evil' that it comes off as funny. Also, I understand that the idea of this movie is for us to be rooting for Hartnett's character, or at least be interested and concerned in how he's going to get out of this situation. Which would work if everything didn't go so well for him. Each time a new obstacle arises the solution immediately presents itself. It felt like he was playing a Hitman game on Easy Mode. It is not thrilling to watch, again it's just funny and predictable how everything just falls right into his lap.
This could be a spoiler but I'm going to say it anyway because it's really just shady marketing. About Half of the movie takes place at the concert. I feel like I should mention this since the concert scenario is the entire draw and should be the focal point of the movie but unfortunately that portion ends shockingly quick. So, if you were wondering how M. Night was going to manage making a full movie off this concept, he didn't. Which leads me to the biggest issue of this movie. Lady Raven aka Saleka Shyamalan, yes that is M. Night's daughter.
Now this is not going to be a tirade about Nepotism because whatever, I really don't care in most cases. And honestly if I were a famous Director and my children (friends and family really) were interested I'd involve them if I could but maybe not to the extent M. Night has here. So Saleka plays Lady Raven the pop star they're going to see in the film. And the music is... fine, not my jam to be honest either way but plays a small part to the story. They build her up to be a performer on Taylor Swift's level, but I don't think this music would get her there realistically. And when she is up on stage performing, she's fine, she's a pop star in real life so she knows how to do all that. There are moments where she talks to the crowd and shows she's not a trained actress but again they're short moments better described as filler and a chance to highlight his daughter. UNTIL... she takes over the whole damn movie out of nowhere! After the concert ends Lady Raven becomes the protagonist and almost a final girl of sorts and during all that Saleka definitely demonstrates she's not an actress, it's very painful in some places. She's not good and yet she gets a lot of screen time that she shouldn't. Including a moment where they just stop a tense scene dead so she can play an uninterrupted song on the piano for at least two and a half minutes. I hate to just call her out and lay into her about all this, but her dad put her in that situation, and he shouldn't have, it's okay to say no if it's going to hurt your movie which it absolutely did. She has long moments of drawn-out dialogue where I seriously considered walking out of the theater. She is the only thing stopping me from showing this movie to my friends to laugh at like I did with 'Old' but Saleka is so bad it even ruins that, making it impossible to share.
Finally, the twist, it's nothing and whatever twist you may have come up with going into the movie or during it is better than the one we receive as an audience. Not good, not interesting, but I didn't see it coming. Mostly because it was so far out there, how/why would I have ever guessed it?
In conclusion I don't recommend this movie at least in a theater. Watch it on streaming if you're really interested and then you can feel less guilty when you shut it off after Saleka takes over and that is your Quarters Worth.
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