Trap

‘Trap’ Review: M. Night Shyamalan Directs Two-Thirds of a Fun Cat-and-Mouse Game. Josh Hartnett stars as a father with a secret in this M. Night Shyamalan film set at a concert. “Dad, this is the literally the best day of my life,” the teenager Riley (Ariel Donoghue) beams to her doting father, Cooper (Josh Hartnett), in the opening minutes of M. Night Shyamalan’s “Trap.” That feeling won’t last — but for the first half of this mischievous thriller, we’re also having fun.

Riley is ecstatic to have stadium floor seats for her favorite pop icon, Lady Raven (Saleka). The child’s attention is on the stage. Ours is on her father who is having visible difficulty concentrating on the show. He’s clocking the cameras, the exits, the unusual number of cops, the no-nonsense F.B.I. profiler (Hayley Mills) muttering into her walkie-talkie. The police are hunting a serial killer named the Butcher, but all they’ve got to go on is that he’s a middle-aged man in this majority girl crowd. Underneath the thumping bass and the squeals, Shyamalan wordlessly clues us in that the unassuming Cooper is also a slayer desperate to escape.

Genre: Crime, Horror, Mystery, Thriller
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Cast: Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue, Saleka Shyamalan, Alison Pill, Hayley Mills