A father and his teen daughter attend a pop concert only to realize they’ve entered the center of a dark and sinister event.

M. Night Shyamalan is back with his latest movie ‘Trap’, which from the trailer, promises to be another twist filled thriller that builds on a frankly, quite ludicrous premise, and if you’re in the mood for this kind of nonsense, ‘Trap’ will hit the mark. That is to say that this is a deeply, deeply stupid movie, from the underlying premise that barely makes sense to the implausible ways the plot unfolds even taking into account a degree of belief suspension for ‘movie logic’. Yet at the same time it’d be hard to say I didn’t have a good time watching this, laughing along at the absurdities as they continue to pile up – exactly what I expected from a M. Night Shyamalan movie.

The premise centres on a concert for the pop artist Lady Raven (played by Shyamalan’s daughter Saleka), which has been turned into a large scale trap in order to capture a notorious serial killer known as ‘The Butcher’. The idea is that once all the attendees are inside the venue it’ll be locked down with no one allowed in or out, with all men in attendance being fully checked before they can leave. ‘The Butcher’ is played by Josh Hartnett (otherwise known as firefighter Cooper Adams), and he is one of the key factors that helps this to entertain despite its problems, with a scenery chewing performance where it is clear he’s having an absolute ball. He’s attending this concert with his daughter, however when he realises the police presence is significantly higher than usual, he starts to formulate a plan to escape from a seemingly impossible situation.

Even if you can get past the nonsense of locking down 20k people at a concert to capture a serial killer, with a major pop star agreeing to their event and fans being treated in such a way, the fun really starts once the venue is locked down. For starters, I’m not sure Shyamalan can ever have attended a concert, because this one appears to have 3 or 4 random breaks during the set, while during Lady Raven’s performance, a large number of her fanatical fans seem to be wandering the concourse, browsing the merch and food stands, instead of watching the artist they’ve presumably paid a lot of money for. Maybe the U.S. is different, but here in the U.K. the only folks not watching the main act at a concert are folks nipping to the toilet or to grab a quick drink.

That is the daftness of the basis of the premise, but it gets more ridiculous from here. There’s a character who appears to be a genius who is advising the police on how ‘The Butcher’ is going to react to the situation, which fair enough, serial killer profiling is a well established thing. Yet this character also appears to be fully briefing Lady Raven on events, as if it would be standard protocol to take time out of your incredibly sensitive sting operation to provide regular updates to a random pop star. Then you have the ways in which Cooper/The Butcher manages to seamlessly infiltrate the staff at the venue (who also appear to have been fully briefed) and the police, with individuals just passing on information to a random man at an event where they are tracking down a RANDOM MAN! I’ll not say too much about the final act so as to avoid spoiling things, but suffice to say the ludicrous nature of this movie only ramps up further and further.

You may read this review and think I hated ‘Trap’, but I really didn’t! For all it’s undoubtedly shoddy writing, implausible premise and general nonsense, this is absolutely entertaining and if you’re in the mood for an over the top thriller with Josh Hartnett at the top of his game, then ‘Trap’ should hit the mark.

Rating: 3/5

Directed By: M. Night Shyamalan

Starring: Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue, Saleka Night Shyamalan, Hayley Mills and Alison Pill

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt26753003/