{"id":1505,"date":"2024-08-03T04:01:23","date_gmt":"2024-08-03T04:01:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=1505"},"modified":"2024-10-19T21:43:42","modified_gmt":"2024-10-20T01:43:42","slug":"trap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/08\/03\/trap\/","title":{"rendered":"Trap"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Trap<\/strong> (2024)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Warner Bros.\/Horror-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 105 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (some violent content, brief strong language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: M. Night Shyamalan\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: M. Night Shyamalan\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Herdis Stefansdottir\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Sayombhu Mukdeeprom\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: August 2, 2024 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue, Saleka Shyamalan, Hayley Mills, Jonathan Langdon, Alison Pill, Mark Bacolcol, Kid Cudi, Russ, Marnie McPhail.<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0The career of filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan has seen its share of ups and downs. His previous film, last year\u2019s apocalypse-maybe thriller Knock at the Cabin, is one of the latter. His latest work, the psychological thriller Trap<\/strong>, is one of his better recent efforts. It\u2019s pretty good, but it still doesn\u2019t reach the level of his twisty ghost story The Sixth Sense.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Josh Hartnett (Oppenheimer) stars as Cooper, a father taking his 13YO daughter Riley (Donoghue, Wolf Like Me) to a concert featuring her favorite pop singer Lady Raven (M. Night\u2019s daughter Saleka). She\u2019s excited to be seeing her favorite singer up close and personal. Dad just likes spending time with his kid. He notices there\u2019s a heavy police presence in and around the venue. He asks a friendly T-shirt vendor (Langdon, Run the Burbs) what all the fuss is about. He tells Cooper confidentially that the concert is really a trap set up by the FBI to catch a serial killer known as \u201cThe Butcher\u201d. They received a tip he\u2019d be there.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The info the feds received is good. The Butcher is in attendance. It\u2019s Cooper! But you already know that from the trailer, right? A sociopath with mother issues, he\u2019s smart, controlled, organized and extremely dangerous. He sees the trap as a challenge. While Riley enjoys the show, he looks for a way out past the police and feds guarding every exit. The plan, devised by FBI profiler Dr. Grant (Mills, The Parent Trap), is to question every man at the concert. Cooper does everything he can to make sure he\u2019s not questioned. He comes up with some pretty ingenious things.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Trap<\/strong> is at its best when M. Night keeps the action confined to the arena. When he does, it\u2019s a fairly taut thriller. It\u2019s less so in the third act when it moves to another location. That\u2019s when it starts to fall apart with a series of developments that become increasingly unbelievable. By the end, it even borders on silly with all the tricks Cooper pulls to evade capture. I wasn\u2019t buying any of it, yet I was strangely entertained by it. Even so, it\u2019s disappointing M. Night couldn\u2019t maintain what he had going on up until a certain point.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In the lead role, Hartnett does a very good job. I was never all that impressed with his acting, but he\u2019s gotten better over the years. In Trap<\/strong>, he shows a certain playfulness while he looks for a way to escape the trap set for him. He has this sly smile that sets people\u2019s mind at ease while he gets useful information out of them. True, he gets a little OTT near the end, but he never looks like he\u2019s not having fun.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In her first major film role, Donoghue has natural screen presence as a teen excited to be in close proximity to her favorite pop star. Like the other young girls in attendance, she knows all the words to all the songs. She\u2019s so taken with Lady Raven, she barely notices her father\u2019s odd behavior. Saleka, a pop star herself making her acting debut, has a pleasing voice. Like a lot of teen idol pop singers, her character\u2019s songs are disposable. However, she does play a crucial role in the later goings-on. One could argue she\u2019s the heroine of the picture. Mills, on the other hand, is an odd bit of casting. I\u2019m wondering if M. Night cast her as an inside joke, a reference to her role in that other \u201cTrap\u201d movie, you know the one. Speaking on inside jokes, look for a poster for The Watchers, the horror movie written and directed by his other daughter Ishana, in one scene.<\/p>\n

\u00a0While I doubt that Trap<\/strong> will ever be regarded as a classic, it\u2019s still good enough to earn a pass mainly based on Hartnett\u2019s commitment to his role. He\u2019s having fun, that\u2019s true, but he never treats his character as a joke. The story M. Night tells is a good one. It\u2019ll hold your interest throughout. Don\u2019t go looking for any big scares or crazy final plot twists. He doesn\u2019t do that this time. It\u2019s nice to see he doesn\u2019t always resort to the same trick.\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trap (2024)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Warner Bros.\/Horror-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 105 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (some violent content, brief strong language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: M. Night Shyamalan\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: M. Night Shyamalan\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Herdis Stefansdottir\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Sayombhu Mukdeeprom\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: August 2, 2024 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue, Saleka Shyamalan, Hayley Mills, Jonathan Langdon, Alison Pill, Mark Bacolcol, Kid Cudi, Russ, Marnie McPhail. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1826,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-suspense-thrillers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Trap-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1505"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2043,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1505\/revisions\/2043"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}