Not a regular dad: Josh Hartnett as Cooper in Trap. Photo / supplied
Not a regular dad: Josh Hartnett as Cooper in Trap. Photo / supplied
Film review: Say what you will about the absurdity of M Night Shyamalan’s films, they are never less than engrossing. In Old, he trapped a diverse group of strangers on a mysterious beach where they each began to age at a horrific pace; Knock at the Cabin pitched an innocentfamily against a gang of unhinged, Armageddon-proclaiming sibyls. He’s made his name with movies about ghosts, unseen aliens, and murderers with dissociative identity disorder.
By comparison, Trap, the director’s latest plot-twisty, psychobabble-inflected dalliance, is a more “realistic” affair.
Josh Hartnett is Cooper, a dad who takes his teen daughter, Riley (Ariel Donoghue), to a concert by Lady Raven (an impressive impression of a Lady Gaga-esque superstar from Shyamalan’s own daughter, Saleka).
Little does Cooper know, but the concert is an elaborate trap to capture the city’s resident serial killer, The Butcher. It is rapidly revealed that nice-guy Cooper is the eponymous chopper-upper, and he must find a way out of the arena as the police draw in.
Ridiculous! I hear you cry. Hartnett could never hurt anyone! Casting him as the handsome, functional family man is one of Shyamalan’s smarter moves. There’s as much about Trap that works as flops. We’re clearly not meant to take this seriously, which is just as well, because when the esteemed criminal profiler played by British screen veteran Hayley Mills turns up, you can’t help but laugh. Espousing textbook forensic diagnoses, Mills must surely have been cast as a cinematic in-joke on her starring turn in 1961′s The Parent Trap.
Ever since he broke out with The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, Shyamalan seems cursed by initially sound premises that go a bit haywire towards the end. But it’s all in good fun, and though it’s relentlessly silly, Trap will keep you hooked.
Rating out of five: ★★★
Trap, directed by M Night Shyamalan, is in cinemas now.
