The Summer of Shyamalan: Trap (2024)

Patrick and Taylor are watching all the exits and checking everyone that leaves.

Patrick: We have reached the end of our Summer of Shyamalan. How do you feel? Smarter, faster, stronger?

Taylor: Smarter? No. Faster? Absolutely not. I do feel stronger, but that's because of my new hyperfixation, at-home pilates. I'm officially trading in my Summer of Shyamalan for Hot Girl Summer!

Patrick: Too bad it's already August which means school starts this month which means summer is over. We've been preparing all summer for M. Night's latest film, Trap. Do you feel like the preparation helped or hurt your enjoyment of the film?

Taylor: Tough to say! In some ways, both. I was always aware of M. Night's pitfalls and his tendency to get in his own way, but when you watch a ton of his films in a short period like we have, you really can't help but point out all of his habits, which is definitely something I did with Trap. At the same time, this was our watch following Old, which was truly despicable, so in that sense this homework helped!

Patrick: Trap follows Josh Hartnett's character as he takes his daughter to a big pop concert. When law enforcement learns that the local notorious serial killer, The Butcher, will be at the concert, they set up...a trap. You would expect it to be about whether or not Josh is The Butcher, but as the trailer and first five minutes makes clear, he most definitely is. M. Night has much more up his sleeve!

Taylor: And by that, I can only assume you're referring to his own bullshit?

Patrick: We will get to that! Let's start with the positives. Your favorite part was obviously Josh Hartnett. Was he Josh HEARTnett?

Taylor: To me, he is always Josh Heartnett! The man has aged like a fine wine. He gives an excellent, truly chilling performance toward the end of the film. It made me wonder when someone will cast him in a really good serial killer movie!

Patrick: I think he's used up his one chance at a serial killer. He's pulling out all the Bundy stuff here. He's got more than 25 years of performances under his belt, but I've yet to see the Hartnett performance that blew me away. I was hoping it would be this one, but he's stuck with M. Night's dialogue. Yeah yeah intentional blah blah stylistic, it just doesn't play for me. Basically ever. And this is probably the best it's ever played, but that's only because it's weird and Josh's character is weird.

Taylor: I fell in love with him as Trip Fontaine in The Virgin Suicides (who didn't?) and have enjoyed him in everything else. Halloween H20: 20 Years Later is fun, and so is The Faculty. I just find his presence so wildly charming, (who doesn't?) I would agree that he's not knocking my socks off with any individual performance, but he just doesn't need to. His character is written very oddly (I mean, most of the movie is...), but I appreciate that he does the best he can with it. You can tell that he's someone who feeds off an acting partner to spar with and in Trap, Allison Pill breathes a new life into his performance right there at the end.

Patrick: Too bad it completely falls apart by the end, but we'll get there. I was pleasantly surprised by Saleka Shyamalan as the popstar Lady Raven. It really is the Summer of Shyamalan, because it's been M. Night all summer, but we also saw daughter Ishana's debut feature with The Watchers and now we see other daughter Saleka. She's singin' and dancin' and actin' with the best of 'em! Well, not the best, but you get what I'm saying.

Taylor: When it comes to the talents of the Shyamalan clan, after seeing The Watchers, I can't say I had the highest hopes for Saleka, but you're right! She does what's needed. Again, it's hard to really judge performances against a truly awkward, unmotivated script (in the sense that the disjointed aspects of the story give the characters little sustained motivation), so any opinion has to be taken with a grain of salt, but she holds her own and the songs, that she also wrote, were on-par for what a bunch of tweens would fangirl over.

Patrick: I was totally down for the movie at the beginning. Sure, it's essentially nonsense, but early on in the film I had the thought, "I watch crap like this all time, DTV/Dollar Store kinda stuff. And it's crap! So maybe I can enjoy this in the same way but with a lot more money and talent. If I can watch this with Dolph Lundgren, why not Josh Hartnett?" And then...it turns...

Taylor: It really took me on a rollercoaster. When Josh kicked things off by doing an over-the-top dad thing, I felt the same way, It's just goofy. I allowed myself to giggle and play along. But then, the goofiness becomes grating when you discover that it's taking itself seriously. It's a mystery with absolutely zero mystery. And I don't even mean that in the sense that they instantly give up his character's secret, but that they don't let you figure anything out or anticipate what's next. But then, in the end, we got a hell of a two-hander scene with him and Allison, and you wonder where this was the whole time. Then, it once again loses you because not only will it NOT END, but he just continues to make the stupidest, easy choices over and over and over again. And on top of it all, it really doesn't end, because there's a mid-credit scene!

Patrick: I don't mean to be dramatic, but the third act truly ruined the whole thing for me. It was his old bag of tricks and I only liked some of them the first time! And yes, it just kept going...and going...and going. Remember how he ended The Village like four times? I missed those days! I think, actually, this is representative of how I'd like to end this piece and this series. Just like any artist, M. Night has his ups and his downs. I really really liked Signs, which I think is the high point. I was disappointed by this, which I think is the low point. But I've been shocked by Film Twitter's response to this movie, which all seems to be in an effort to reclaim his career. Yes, we all know that he struck out terribly for years, from Lady in the Water to After Earth. That's a four-movie run that we completely skipped in this retrospective because we didn't have it in us. But we don't need to say, "He's back," every time he puts out a new movie. I've liked some of them, but they're not as good as we pretend they are. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it's a bad movie. I like his big swings, I like his artistic intentions, I like him as a person in interviews and such, but I think we need to be more honest and less fanboy. I can understand why people feel the need to defend him after the years and years of crap he's received, but he did bring a fair amount of that on himself. I saw those movies. They were bad.

Taylor: I couldn't agree more with the need to level perception of him. When people dissect Wes Anderson and point out every little flaw, where is that same energy for him? His scripts are bad. And yes, there are exceptions to every rule! Signs is an exception. It's been a while since I've seen it, but Knock at the Cabin plays better and better in my mind. Something about The Happening, despite being a bad movie, works better than Old. But there is one thing that every single one of his movies has in common and it's him. His movies REAK of him. And you're right when you say that the end of Trap feels like he's waited and waited and waited and held off as long as possible, but here we are at the end and he has to fit in all of his, shall we say, quirks all at once. Which is disappointing. It's a movie that could have been.

Patrick: So...Knock at the Cabin rewatch? Despite all this, I just can't give him up!

Taylor: Wish I could, but I'm on a Shyamalan cleanse.

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