Sixteen Further Screams For Halloween: Day 4 (Trap)

Oh, and this shot was cinema.

Well, this was unexpected. I'll be upfront and say that it isn't really a horror movie and more of a thriller, but like... Fuck it, it's got a serial killer protagonist and it's my blog so I get the final say on what belongs. There's at least one other film on my list this year that doesn't fall under the traditional horror umbrella, so I am breaking all the rules. Ooh, I'm a rebel. The other unexpected thing for me was that I really enjoyed Trap. M Night Shymalan and I, we have a rocky history. A couple of years ago I watched Old for one of these. I really didn't like it, for reasons I forget but wrote down in that blog post. In contrast to that, earlier this year since my pal Joe did a whole marathon of all of Shymalan's films, I rewatched The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, and those movies kind of rule. Trap is not quite as good as those, but nor is it shit. It was actually pretty fucking good and had me engaged at all times. Yes, even the back half. It seems like this is sort of a Marmite movie, with lots of mixed opinions. All I can do is share mine, and I enjoyed it, and here's a little of why.

You could have made a whole movie out of the premise here, and I think many people are mad because that isn't what Shymalan did. Still, it's a strong premise, calling to mind shades of something like Die Hard. A lone guy besieged in a building, having to sneak around and plan how to get out without being caught himself. Except all of that is flip-flopped. The venue is a crowded arena for a pop concert, the people on patrol are not terrorists but the police, and oh yeah our protagonist is a serial killer. Now, obviously you're not rooting for him to win and get away, or at least I would hope people aren't. Regardless, it is thrilling and exciting to see Josh Hartnett evade capture, plan out potential routes for escape, and have to think on the fly of new ones as the police are outthinking him at every turn. Just because he has to be caught at the end doesn't mean the cat and mouse game can't be fun, and it's really fun to see Hartnett's various bluff checks and ingenuity at play. Again, you could make a whole movie set at the concert, and just because Shymalan didn't doesn't mean that he wasn't smart enough not to or any silly thing like that.

No, the second half is unique in its own way. This is Hartnett's comeuppance, and there is a unique satisfaction in seeing how it's not the police but the pop star herself who ends up repeatedly staying one step ahead of him to spoil his plans. His desperate reveal of who he is to her leads to a short-term gain of escaping the venue, but over this section of the movie she just one-ups his attempts to get away with it over and over. The house of cards is crumbling, and it's this girlie who did it. In fact, there is something to the idea of the power of the feminine overcoming Hartnett's schemes in the film: Everyone who foils him, from the pop star to the FBI profiler to even his own wife, is a woman. A lot of folks will criticize Saleka Night Shymalan as the pop star Lady Raven, stopping short of calling her a Sofia Coppola for the 21st century, but I wasn't bothered by her. I was enraptured by the escalating plot and the way everything came tumbling down for Hartnett's character. 

The trap wasn't literally just the knowledge that he would be at the concert. The trap is his compulsive need to kill, to come back and win. At multiple points near the end of the movie he could have escaped, gone on the lam... but the urge brings him right back to Lady Raven and then his wife, because he needs to kill. That need is the real trap, imprisoning him to just get owned again as he's outwitted. Even if the ending seems to buck the trend of Hartnett getting his comeuppance, he hasn't escaped. He may escape police custody, but the trap remains. It will foil him in the end, and he will have naught but his own compulsion to blame. God damn. Who knew that M Night still had the capacity for such banger cinema still in him? I hope he keeps it up and makes another great one next time.