AUG 17 — Outside of his first three films, and even with those three there are still plenty of detractors when it comes to Unbreakable and Signs, M. Night Shyamalan has had to deal with a lot of ups and downs when it comes to audience and critical reactions to his films.
Not many filmmakers can survive, let alone rise again, after making the kind of back-to-back critical and commercial disasters that The Last Airbender and After Earth were, but the fact that Shyamalan did just that with the self-funded The Visit, for which he reportedly mortgaged his house to raise the funds needed to make it, was nothing short of impressive.
With a career that has clearly taken on many phases, from the early big-budget studio films to the more high-concept and lower-budget latter films, Shyamalan is, by now, a filmmaker that can’t simply be pigeonholed as a one-trick pony anymore, even if people are still expecting a mind-blowing twist or two when walking into his films.
That twist pigeonhole might still apply to the three films he made following his almost career-ending back-to-back disasters, with The Visit, Split and Glass very much depending on twists happening late on to lift the films to another level, but his last few films, including this one, while they do have twists in them (that are usually revealed in the trailers, therefore making the twists far less important), merely use those twists to explore other things rather than depend on them to make the movies worthwhile.
Trap is an even clearer example of this latest phase in Shyamalan’s career, with the trailers making it crystal clear that the film’s protagonist, the typical everyman dad Cooper (skillfully played by Josh Hartnett), is a serial killer, who is now trapped in a stadium after bringing his daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) there to see a concert by pop star Lady Raven (played by Shyamalan’s daughter Saleka, who also wrote & performed the songs for the film).
As also made clear in the trailers, the whole concert is a trap set up by the FBI after finding out that the killer, known as the Butcher in the media, was going to be there.
So clearly this twist is merely a hook to get people to go see the movie to see how this plays out, and while there are other twists happening later on in the film, they are more of the “lite” variety and are simply there to add colour to the film’s plot, not to change it radically like Shyamalan’s twists tended to do early on in his career.
In short, early on in his career, it’s the twists that made the movies worth it whereas now, he just uses the twists to make his movies’ worth now come from other things.
For Trap, I think the pleasure comes from two layers, the first layer being the more obvious enjoyment that comes delighting in a plot and situation that’s nothing short of ridiculous and outrageous, maybe even bonkers, which is a fact that not only Shyamalan clearly knows and acknowledges in the way that he sets up the film’s tone (which can probably be called as “half-winking”), but is also acknowledged by how Hartnett pitches the tone of his performance.
And once Shyamalan makes his trademark cameo appearance, hilariously insisting that he is “her uncle, her mother’s brother” when asked by Cooper about his relationship to Lady Raven, this half-wink tone is made clear for all to see in the audience.
By putting Cooper in this trap, and witnessing his attempts to keep it cool under pressure, with Hartnett expertly using his facial expressions to convey this, the film treats us to all sorts of situations that, in other and more obviously comedic movies, would be described as cringe comedy.
And really, Trap is very possibly Shyamalan’s funniest film yet, and if the audience still doesn’t think that the comedy here is intentional, the mid-credits scene involving a merch guy who interacted with Cooper throughout the film is a clear hint that a lot of this is actually meant to be funny.
The film’s other layer of pleasure is a more hidden one, which is one that observers will probably only realise if they know a little bit more about Shyamalan’s personal life.
As I mentioned above, Shyamalan took a huge risk when mortgaging his house to make The Visit, which is a gamble that thankfully paid off because of the film’s success.
But should it fail like his previous two films The Last Airbender and After Earth did, imagine what it would cost to his personal life and family.
And it is this subtext, buried deep into Cooper’s character as what looks like an often absent dad, taking unnecessary risks by being a serial killer, trying to make up for lost time by trying to be more involved in his daughter Riley’s life, just like Shyamalan is doing lately by producing his daughter Ishana’s directorial debut The Watchers and giving Saleka a possible star-making role as Lady Raven here, that makes Trap a lot more interesting to ponder about.
It’s not every day that a major filmmaker opens up like this, and when one finally does, like Shyamalan here, I can’t help but sit up and take notice.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
