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Trap 2024
Cooper (Josh Hartnett) takes his daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to a huge concert for smash pop star Lady Raven (Saleka Shyamalan). But what should be a father daughter bonding opportunity takes a turn when Cooper realizes that the heavy police presence at the event is all for him . . . because Cooper is a serial killer known as The Butcher who has been terrorizing the local community and who currently has a victim detained in an unknown location.
A fun premise sinks under uneven execution and strange pacing.
The worst disappointments aren’t just movies that are bad, but rather movies that could have so easily been better/good. This movie falls firmly into that category for me, and it’s actually kind of baffling to me how badly the film squanders everything it has going for it.
To start with, the stadium is a great variation on the “locked room” type setting. It’s big enough that the characters can move from location to location, but small enough that characters run into each other again and again, and we can feel the claustrophobia as the officers block each entrance.
The cast is also a perfect fit for this kind of film. John Hartnett has an easy charisma but with those dark eyes that make him perfect as a man hiding a dark secret and masking his evil with charm. Donoghue isn’t given much help from the script, but she does well with her role. Saleka Shyamalan might be overt casting nepotism, but I really enjoyed her as the pop star. I’m a firm believer that Alison Pill makes everything better, so I was thrilled to see her show up in the second half of the film, bringing a much-needed grounding presence.
There are moments--all too rare--when the film hits a really nice dark comedy vibe. In an early attempt to draw the police away from an exit, Cooper casually pushes a woman down the stairs. For the most part, Cooper tries to get his way via charm and bluffing, but in the rare moment that we see his sociopathy casually pop out, it’s fun and seems to promise a build to a demented ending. What we do see of the concert is very visually interesting, with really nice costuming and staging. Cooper’s yellow jacket provides for some nice visual moments setting him aside from the rest of the crowd at the concert. A scene late in the film between Hartnett and Pill (doing an admirable job of playing as close as the script will let her get to the straight woman) speaks to a nicely low-key unhinged energy that the film could have used much more of.
But boy does the movie fail to capitalize on nearly any of this. Hartnett is a naturally charming person, and so having him play up that aspect takes it into an almost shrill territory. He can do exactly this kind of role, and showed it over and over in the Penny Dreadful series. I’m also not sure I bought Hartnett and Donoghue as father and daughter, but a lot of this is due to how manic and disconnected the writing is. Riley’s character is reduced to a lot of “Dad, what’s going on?” when he excuses himself from their seats for the eighth time. There’s a strange amount of runtime spent on Cooper running into the mother of a former friend of his daughter’s, something that neither moves the plot forward nor leads to any kind of resolution.
This movie needed to take a huge hit of inspiration from The Stepfather and it’s look at a man splintering under the pressure of keeping up a suburban dad facade to cover his horrible crimes. Instead, that dynamic only really comes to the fore in the last act. The closed feeling of the concert venue is the best thing the film has going for it, and the decision to move the action away from there is catastrophic.
The movie did hold my interest until the end, but just barely. It starts out looking like it could be stupid fun, but the longer it goes on the more the fun part retreats and the stupid really comes to the forefront. (In a life-threatening situation, would you choose to dial 911, or text someone and ask them to dial 911 for you?).
In what feels like something of a Hail Mary, in the last act the movie gives us Hartnett in a form-fitting SWAT uniform and then another sequence where he takes his shirt off. I mean, thanks movie, but too little too late. (The shirtless scene IS the best scene in the movie, but not because of the cheesecake element). There are also several attempts to introduce twists and surprises that fall mostly flat and just serve to amp up the dumb. In the last 5 minutes the film totally runs out of steam and just gets annoying.
Good for a mindless watch, and I suppose for any fans of Hartnett (though this isn’t his best showing) and Pill.
Trap 2024
Cooper (Josh Hartnett) takes his daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to a huge concert for smash pop star Lady Raven (Saleka Shyamalan). But what should be a father daughter bonding opportunity takes a turn when Cooper realizes that the heavy police presence at the event is all for him . . . because Cooper is a serial killer known as The Butcher who has been terrorizing the local community and who currently has a victim detained in an unknown location.
A fun premise sinks under uneven execution and strange pacing.
The worst disappointments aren’t just movies that are bad, but rather movies that could have so easily been better/good. This movie falls firmly into that category for me, and it’s actually kind of baffling to me how badly the film squanders everything it has going for it.
To start with, the stadium is a great variation on the “locked room” type setting. It’s big enough that the characters can move from location to location, but small enough that characters run into each other again and again, and we can feel the claustrophobia as the officers block each entrance.
The cast is also a perfect fit for this kind of film. John Hartnett has an easy charisma but with those dark eyes that make him perfect as a man hiding a dark secret and masking his evil with charm. Donoghue isn’t given much help from the script, but she does well with her role. Saleka Shyamalan might be overt casting nepotism, but I really enjoyed her as the pop star. I’m a firm believer that Alison Pill makes everything better, so I was thrilled to see her show up in the second half of the film, bringing a much-needed grounding presence.
There are moments--all too rare--when the film hits a really nice dark comedy vibe. In an early attempt to draw the police away from an exit, Cooper casually pushes a woman down the stairs. For the most part, Cooper tries to get his way via charm and bluffing, but in the rare moment that we see his sociopathy casually pop out, it’s fun and seems to promise a build to a demented ending. What we do see of the concert is very visually interesting, with really nice costuming and staging. Cooper’s yellow jacket provides for some nice visual moments setting him aside from the rest of the crowd at the concert. A scene late in the film between Hartnett and Pill (doing an admirable job of playing as close as the script will let her get to the straight woman) speaks to a nicely low-key unhinged energy that the film could have used much more of.
But boy does the movie fail to capitalize on nearly any of this. Hartnett is a naturally charming person, and so having him play up that aspect takes it into an almost shrill territory. He can do exactly this kind of role, and showed it over and over in the Penny Dreadful series. I’m also not sure I bought Hartnett and Donoghue as father and daughter, but a lot of this is due to how manic and disconnected the writing is. Riley’s character is reduced to a lot of “Dad, what’s going on?” when he excuses himself from their seats for the eighth time. There’s a strange amount of runtime spent on Cooper running into the mother of a former friend of his daughter’s, something that neither moves the plot forward nor leads to any kind of resolution.
This movie needed to take a huge hit of inspiration from The Stepfather and it’s look at a man splintering under the pressure of keeping up a suburban dad facade to cover his horrible crimes. Instead, that dynamic only really comes to the fore in the last act. The closed feeling of the concert venue is the best thing the film has going for it, and the decision to move the action away from there is catastrophic.
The movie did hold my interest until the end, but just barely. It starts out looking like it could be stupid fun, but the longer it goes on the more the fun part retreats and the stupid really comes to the forefront. (In a life-threatening situation, would you choose to dial 911, or text someone and ask them to dial 911 for you?).
In what feels like something of a Hail Mary, in the last act the movie gives us Hartnett in a form-fitting SWAT uniform and then another sequence where he takes his shirt off. I mean, thanks movie, but too little too late. (The shirtless scene IS the best scene in the movie, but not because of the cheesecake element). There are also several attempts to introduce twists and surprises that fall mostly flat and just serve to amp up the dumb. In the last 5 minutes the film totally runs out of steam and just gets annoying.
Good for a mindless watch, and I suppose for any fans of Hartnett (though this isn’t his best showing) and Pill.