The Reel Review
A deranged serial killer nicknamed The Butcher discovers that the Philadelphia pop concert he is attending with his unsuspecting teenage daughter is actually a police trap designed to capture him. Josh Hartnett stars in this crime thriller from writer/director M. Night Shyamalan.
Just when you think Shyamalan’s movies can’t get any worse, he trots out what may just be the silliest, most moronic and downright weird movie of them all. It also stars his daughter Saleka Shyamalan as Lady Raven, a wildly popular Lady Gaga/Taylor Swift-type pop star whose arena show is the backdrop for this dull and bizarre PG-13 film that asks the question no one wanted answered: What could have happened if the finale of The Silence of the Lambs played out at a pop music concert?
Shyamalan, who himself also appears in the film as one of Lady Raven’s assistants, spends way too much time showcasing his nepo baby’s singing performances – are we at a movie or a concert? Her attempt at acting is embarrassingly wooden. Nothing in this terrible time waste of a movie has even the slightest resemblance to reality. Even Shyamalan’s so-called twist of an ending in this mercilessly overlong film feels as phoned in as it is ridiculous. Please, don’t fall for this Trap.
REEL FACTS
• M. Night Shyamalan cast Josh Hartnett as the star of Trap after discovering that they each have three daughters during lunch in Ireland during filming of his daughter Ishana Shyamalan’s 2024 debut horror/mystery The Watchers.
• Shyamalan cast Hayley Mills as the police profiler, presumably as a joke/play on her starring role in the big 1961 hit, The Parent Trap.
• Trap cost $30 million to make and made $82 million at the box office.
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