let's go to the trap, trap, the trap that lets you out

please note that this is not an official edition of three stars fine, both because i do not have the requisite stamina to support writing more than one of these things a month and also because no one needs to think about patrick wilson that much. that having been said, i was last night made witness to the 2024 movie that really happened trap, more generally known as the latest addition to the m. night shyamalan oeuvre of fabular twist-filled theme park horror for sickos, although whether this movie should be considered part of a comeback or part of a downswing at this point is frankly beyond me to judge. i don't intend to write a full piece about this movie, so suffice it to say that it is bad - it is so so so so very bad - bad both in all the normal ways that a movie can be bad and also in innovative new ways that i have never before considered, and yet i still had a better time watching it than i did longlegs (2024). trap is an example of the sort of breathtakingly incompetent filmmaking that i assume people are talking about when they talk about emily in paris, in as much as that the dialogue is bad, the dramatic tension is non-existent and at least one member of the cast is a rizzless nepo baby, and the fact that this movie is an offering from a seasoned professional would be surprising were that seasoned professional literally anyone else. as it is, it feels more or less par for the course at this stage, in that m. night shyamalan has been, and still is, capable of incredible flights of imagination and feats of storytelling over the course of his career, but is also responsible for the beach that makes you old and also that scene in the happening (2008) where someone gets run over by a lawnmower, so if you think about it what am i even really complaining about here.

anyway, in case you were unaware, trap is a movie about a serial killer being caught in a sting operation at the arena concert of a pop sensation named lady raven, and the serial killer is played by josh harnett, and below you will find a list all the times when i wondered in all seriousness whether i was in fact watching a movie or instead being tortured for some unspecified crime:

a list of all the times when i wondered in all seriousness whether i was in fact watching a movie or instead being tortured for some unspecified crime:

- when the movie started and i thought for a second that it might be sort of fun in the campy and ridiculous manner of any movie with such a hooky premise, and then we were immediately presented with all these teens being like oh my god it's pop sensation lady raven and i remembered that pop sensation lady raven was being played by m. night shyamalan's daughter saleka and that this whole movie was in fact a craven attempt to springboard saleka's singing career into the mainstream, and i started to look at the movie askance

- when josh harnett, who we knew was a serial killer because early on in the movie he went to the toilet apparently with the sole intention of looking at a video on his phone of a guy he was keeping in some kind of saw trap, asked his daughter - a pop sensation lady raven superfan - what the term "crispy" meant, in youth vernacular

- when josh hartnett told his daughter to let some other girl have the last t-shirt at the merch stand or something and the guy selling the t-shirts said "you're a good family, good values"

- when pop sensation lady raven's concert started, and it became apparent that we were going to be required to watch vast swathes of pop sensation lady raven's two hour set in full, in the manner of vox lux (2018), and i started thinking grimly about charming throwaway flick of the hugh grant interwar years music and lyrics (2007), which may have only been middling but nonetheless presented you with a far more convincing taylor swift proxy, in the figure of a pop star played by haley bennett who sang songs called buddha's delight (om shanti shanti) and entering bootytown and also you didn't actually have to listen to them all the way through.

- when everyone spilled out into the foyer of the arena at one point because they were apparently “performing a scene change on stage”, but then when we came back the stage was exactly the same

- when it became apparent that a crack team of fbi profilers in the manner of criminal minds had come to the concert to catch josh hartnett, a fact we knew because the guy the merch stand just told him so?

- when pop sensation lady raven did not change her outfit once

- when josh harnett stole a police radio and was able to listen to all the police goings on, much of which involved hayley mills (for some reason) saying "as you know" and then explaining the entire sting operation in immense detail, and repeatedly saying the word unsub with the cadence of one who had never heard the word before and maybe thought it was like a food term or something

- when josh hartnett considered pulling the fire alarm, only to hear hayley mills saying over the police radio that that was exactly what they should expect him to do and that "if he pulls the fire alarm, we will only let women and children out" - a decision which the health and safety procedures of exactly no venue would allow for, however many poorly backstoried murderers happened to be in there

- when we were treated to a wide shot of the foyer just to make sure we could all see the shake shack logo

- when josh harnett witnessed a police briefing, where a police officer described his many helpless victims in detail, including a guy who was apparently “voted Most Liked Teacher, at the school where he worked”

- when josh hartnett caused an explosion at the hot dog stand by throwing a lot of glass bottles into the deep fat fryer, which was effective because a girl went and started directly down into the deep fat fryer for upwards of eleven seconds before it exploded

- when josh hartnett saw the ghost of his i guess dead mother and i thought it was ann dowd then said to myself how fucking dare you ann dowd would never lower herself, but then i thought about how margot martindale was in the movie orphan as vera farmiga's therapist who hated her

- when we had to look at the shake shack logo again

- when we learned that josh harnett had an identifying tattoo of i guess a sheep on his wrist, and then later discovered that his daughter had been given a bunch of temporary tattoos in her merch bag, thus leading us to assume that he would cleverly cover up his tattoo with a temporary tattoo in order to evade the authorities, and then it never came up again. my friend eliza refered to this as the cinematic rule of m. night shyamalan's gun, whereby a gun appears in the first act and fuck knows if it's going to appear in the third act

- when kid cudi turned up as pop sensation lady raven's mentor, an i guess rapper called "the thinker" in a long blonde wig who did nothing of note except look at josh hartnett like he wanted to have sex with him

- when josh hartnett threatened pop sensation lady raven into letting them leave the concert in her limo and thus escape undetected, and you were like ah jesus she's a playable character now, and then she was like why don't we go to your home???

- when they brought pop sensation lady raven to their home, and josh hartnett's wife presented pop sensation lady raven with a pie she had made and said "is it fluffy" and pop sensation lady raven said "just the right amount". of fluffy? of pie? these are not how human beings talk to each other.

- when pop sensation lady raven asked if she could sing the family a song as i guess cover for her plan to take josh hartnett's phone, and then sang an entire song, again

- when pop sensation lady raven barricaded herself in the bathroom and started up an insta live to ask for help rather than idk calling the police and absolutely none of the comments on her feed were like omg pop sensation lady raven come to brazil

- when pop sensation lady raven got trapped in a car with josh hartnett and it transpired that someone at the fbi had apparently done some kind of deep character work with her because she started pretending to be his sexy mother and he was like, oh no

- when pop sensation lady raven's fans mobilised to save that guy josh harnett had locked in a saw trap somewhere, and pop sensation lady raven duly became a sort of madonna figure, walking in slow motion across a lawn in the rain to meet this guy, who presumably was like i just got out of some guy's non-consensual shibari basement why is taylor swift trying to hug me now

- when josh hartnett was finally left alone with his wife and i was like thank god it's finally going to be revealed to us that his wife was in on it the whole time and then it was like no she's just sad about him being a murderer because of feminism

- when josh harnett was tased seven times by the authorities and was unaffected enough to still be able to stick his fingers into some guy's eyes

- when josh harnett was taken away to jail and his children were returned to the house from approximately 3 hours of foster care in good enough time to watch their serial killer father being bundled away by police, thus scarring them forever

- when the dialogue got so bad and so graceless at one point that i literally started wondering if AI scripting would be worse or better, and then i started to think about the crushing inevitability of the AI discourse cycle when the first all-AI movie is ultimately released and tons of people picket the cinemas but just as many people decide to watch it, either out of curiosity or because they are just those unfathomable online dorks and virgins who spend all their time commenting on takedowns of AI like "like it or not, it's getting better all the time", and all this curiosity viewing gives the first ever all-AI movie inflated viewing figures, thereby leading to endless weeks of circular online discourse and journalists writing articles like "the recent release of Monster Smash Time proves that AI is here to stay" and "i'm a writer: here's why AI is bad for my cats" and on and on and on unto the heat death of the universe, and then i looked at the screen again and thought fucking hell even this movie is better than having to think about AI ever again

anyway. mystifyingly i’m still a fan of josh harnett. ai is bad and will kill us all. the end.