phancy.com - horror reviews - MOH 2024

Trap (2024)



IMDb Info

Release Year: 2024
Runtime: 1h 45m
Country: USA, Canada
Language: English
Genre Tags: Crime, Horror, Thriller
Plot Summary: A father and his teen daughter attend a pop concert only to realize they've entered the center of a dark and sinister event.

Poster - Title Card


phancy.com rating:

phancy.com notes: One of those 90-minute movies that feels 3 hours long. When Josh Hartnett finally escapes the area at the 60-minute point, I thought 90 minutes had passed and we were finishing things up. Nope. Still 45 minutes of increasingly tedious inanity to go! To be fair, Josh Hartnett is the best part of this, and is compelling as a dorky dad who loves his daughter, but is also a scary serial killer. Watching him try to wiggle his way out of the titular trap is entertaining enough, but nothing ever really feels that tense or claustrophobic. It’s also very obvious that Shyamalan wrote this to showcase his daughter. There are too many scenes that focus on the concert itself, which is oddly shot to feature the background video screens more than the actual performance, and she continues to feature in the plot like she’s the hero of the movie, though she is not.


Outside Reviews:

Brian Tallerico
2.5 out of 4 stars - rogerebert.com

Ultimately, there’s something to be said for a man who can get a movie like “Trap” made in today’s market. It’s a weird, unpredictable movie not based on a pre-existing IP, and we are in an era where there are depressingly few original ideas in blockbuster filmmaking. For that alone – and the Joshaissance clearly unfolding with “Oppenheimer” and now this – it’s tempting to give “Trap” a pass. It’s just too bad that it ultimately feels like the word people so often throw at pop music confections: disposable.


Jesse Hassenger
B+ - Josh Hartnett squirms and plots through M. Night Shyamalan's perfectly thrilling Trap

That’s in keeping with the filmmaking, at least, and maybe Shyamalan means for that tension to remain unresolvable; maybe that’s part of what gives Trap an eerie, uneasy power despite not invoking the supernatural touches Shyamalan is generally known for. Despite the lack of superhumans, ghosts, or ladies in the water, there are times when Cooper feels a bit like the James McAvoy beast and Bruce Willis hero from the Unbreakable trilogy, struggling to inhabit the same body, all while attempting to keep his daughter happier and healthier than he is. On one level, Shyamalan feels more comfortable than ever; Trap may cook more purely and entertainingly than anything in his last decade of self-styled pop hits. But it also suggests that there are discordant notes that he can’t, and probably shouldn’t, ever get out of his system.