Prolific thriller filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan returned to theaters on August 2 with his latest film “Trap,” which stars Josh Hartnett and Ariel Donoghue as a father and daughter who attend a pop concert where there’s more going on than meets the eye. There’s always more going on than meets the eye in a Shyamalan movie, of course, but how does this mystery compare to the writer-director’s previous efforts? It wasn’t screened in advance for critics, but reviews trickled out on release day.
The new film has a MetaCritic score of 52 based on 28 reviews counted so far: 11 are classified as positive, 12 are somewhat mixed and five are negative. On Rotten Tomatoes, which counts reviews simply as fresh or rotten, the film has divided critics with a 49% rating based on 59 reviews so far. Those numbers are little lower than the 63 MC score and 67% RT rating for Shyamalan’s last film, 2023’s “Knock at the Cabin.”
Rodrigo Perez (The Playlist) says that “it’s one of Shyamalan’s best movies in years, arguably since ‘The Village’ … It’s not entirely perfect, and suspension of disbelief may vary, but M. Night returns to fine form here, led by a terrific performance from Josh Hartnett.” Jordan Hoffman (Entertainment Weekly) calls it Shyamalan’s “most preposterous movie yet,” but it’s “masterfully shot, with great use of wide angles, cropped frames, and a sense of foreboding inside and around the concert venue.” And William Bibbiani (The Wrap) comments on the film’s “contrived set-up” but praises it as “a fiendishly clever thriller.”
Less favorable is Owen Gleiberman (Variety): he thinks Hartnett “exudes star quality,” but “how invested can we be in a high-concept serial killer whose emotions are no more believable than his escapes?” Tim Grierson (Screen Daily) thinks “there’s an appealing sense of play to Shyamalan’s unpredictable, teasingly preposterous execution,” but “Shyamalan and Hartnett struggle to fashion a convincingly layered murderer whose mental unravelling and inner anguish are sufficiently captivating.” Thomas Floyd (Washington Post) also believes the attempts to give the movie psychological layers are lacking: “It’s the swing-and-miss attempts to imbue the escapism with depth … that most frustrate in a movie that repeatedly mistakes trauma for complexity.”
Dylan Roth (Observer) believes “those acclimatized to his brand of weird will forgive the flaws the way they do their dad’s corny jokes,” but “there are borderline ridiculous twists as likely to provoke laughs as gasps.” Peter Travers (ABC News) goes even further to say that the film “quickly dives off the cliff from disappointment to disaster.” Shyamalan films have always pushed the envelope when it comes to plausibility, and not just when his characters see dead people. But judging from the critical assessments, the film appears to be true to his brand. It’s likely there’s a particular audience that will be happily ensnared by “Trap.”
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