Imagine you're taking your 12-year-old daughter to a concert to see one of the biggest pop stars in the world in exchange for her impressive academic performances in school.
Now imagine spotting what you feel is an unnecessary overload in security for what seems to be a pop concert with a general target audience of teenage girls.
Now imagine you find out the fact that the whole concert is a trap, built for the sole purpose of capturing and imprisoning local serial killer known as 'The Butcher'.
Now imagine... you're 'The Butcher'.
That essentially, in a nutshell, is what we see take place before us in M. Night Shyamalan's newest addition to his long and impressive catalogue of films.
'Trap' is a movie that very much reveals itself in all of it's glory (or lack of) throughout the 148-second runtime of it's official trailer.
What seems to be an exciting, original and enticing concept certainly lives up to those intentions, but fails to provide us with anything out of the unexpected to keep us interested for the entire one hour and 45 minutes of this film's runtime.
Throughout his filmography, M. Night has been known for setting up interesting and original concepts for movies, and then mixing it with a handful of unexpected and unforeseen plot twists to keep the audience engaged.
But unfortunately, this just isn't the case with M. Night Shyamalan's 'Trap'. The film essentially seems to be exactly what it says on the box and nothing more. If you were to walk into the cinema theatre with intentions of witnessing some unexpected plot twists in good old M. Night fashion, you will sadly be disappointed.
Throughout this film M. Night also miserably fails to capture any sense of realism between the characters we see on screen. From some of the cringey exchanges in dialogue between our protagonists to some questionable and unlikely decisions they seem to make, there are large portions of this film that just make it seem "off".
Specifically in the opening acts of the movie where we are introduced to the characters of Cooper and Riley as they enter the arena hosting the 'trap', there are some cringeworthy exchanges in dialogue between the pair that makes the audience question whether the two characters represent a realistic father-daughter relationship.
All of this aside, Josh Hartnett easily provides us with the best performance of his career and proves that he has the skills necessary to be labelled as a leading man in this industry.
It could be argued that Hartnett is tasked with the responsibility of portraying two characters in this movie, one as 'Cooper', the loving father who would do anything for his family. And the other as 'The Butcher', the psychotic serial killer who would do anything to keep his evil identity unveiled.
But unfortunately Hartnett's performance is one of very few redeeming factors within this movie.
Much of M. Night Shyamalan's work nowadays causes a huge divide in opinion. Most members of the cult-like following of the filmmakers work would die on the cross to defend his recent catalogue of movies.
However for the casual movie-goer, 'Trap' certainly doesn't live up to the high expectations that the director set for himself throughout the early stages of his career and is likely to send most audiences into both boredom and a state of disappointment.
PrimeTime Films Score: D+
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