Trap (M. Night Shyamalan, 2024, USA/Canada)

Trap is the latest film in M. Night Shyamalan's late-career renaissance and his first film with Warner Bros. since 2006's disastrous Lady in the Water. After 2023's surprisingly interesting Knock at the Cabin, we were interested in Trap based on its premise alone - a serial killer is trapped by a police blockade at a Taylor Swift-style concert that he has taken his daughter to. As with most Shyamalan films, the premise is stronger on paper than the final execution, but this is what we have come to expect at this point. The film was inspired by the real-life Operation Flagship, a 1985 sting operation wherein wanted fugitives were lured to a convention center for free NFL tickets.

Josh Hartnett is our lead girl's dad - Cooper. A familiar face to Gen X and Millennial audiences, Hartnett is having something of a renaissance these days - appearing in 2023's Oppenheimer and toplining the well-received action comedy Fight or Flight. That Cooper is a serial killer is made evident in the marketing of the film, so it is made clear to us very early on in the film. The question then for the audience is how is Shyamalan going to keep this interesting for a feature-length film.

Shyamalan keeps it together remarkably well for the time Cooper is inside the concert venue with his daughter. Once they leave the concert venue, things start to go off the rails. Not that the film is not absurd from the get-go, but it stretches the limits of absurdity in the final act. Still, Trap is quite entertaining and enjoyable for what it is, and we like that someone is trying to emulate Hitchcock in 2025. This one is a bit uneven, but we'd rather have Shyamalan making movies than a nameless, faceless Hollywood figure "for hire".

6/10