Whether the films work for you or not, there’s no denying that an M. Night Shyamalan film is going to provoke a reaction; we’re not talking heavily divisive so much as generating conversation with audiences heralding the best parts and decrying the worst. His original films are provocative and even his adaptations, like Old (2021), bring with them a certain challenge that inspires debate in where their inventiveness might reach too close to the sun. Even Shyamalan’s arguably best films — The Sixth Sense (1999) or Split (2016) — have their weak points, which is still leagues above what is easily his worst, live-action adaptation Avatar: The Last Airbender (2010). His latest project, the darkly comic thriller Trap (2024), follows that same path of fascinating idea whose best parts are worth turning over in one’s mind, dissecting them to see how they’re constructed and executed, even as the weaker bolts and support pieces threaten to buckle under the inspiration. Thanks to Warner Bros. Discover Home Entertainment, fans of Trap can now dive back in with a few bonus materials to enhance the experience, but are they enough to warrant the purchase? Let’s investigate.
L-R: Josh Hartnett as Cooper and Ariel Donoghue as Riley in Warner Bros. Pictures’ crime drama thriller TRAP, a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures. © 2024 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.
After receiving an exemplary report card, Cooper (Josh Harnett) rewards his daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) with tickets to see her favorite singer, Lady Raven (Saleka Night Shyamalan). She’s sad that she’s not attending with her friends due to an interpersonal fallout, so Cooper’s doing all he can to lift her spirits throughout the show. However, as Riley relaxes into the groove of the show, making friends with rowmates and singing to her heart’s content, Cooper grows ever more on edge as he notices the increasing law enforcement presence that is not only stationed outside the doors of the venue, but moving through the crowd, removing some of the male attendees. His instincts prove to be correct as he learns that the Lady Raven concert is an elaborate setup to capture a serial killer known as The Butcher, the sobriquet that secretly belongs to Cooper. Can he escape with his secret intact? Can he make sure that Riley remains enshrined in her innocence? Or is today the day The Butcher is stopped?
As this is a home release for a film that’s not only been in theaters but available on digital and Max already, we’re going to dig into the special features and 4K UHD presentation before offering thoughts on the film itself. Consider this your spoiler warning.
L-R: Josh Hartnett, Marnie McPhail-Diamond, and Director M. Night Shyamalan on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ crime drama thriller TRAP, a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Sabrina Lantos. © 2024 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.
What’s most disappointing, though not entirely surprising, is the lack of in-depth bonus features. For a film that seeks to turn narrative expectation upside down by placing the audience with the killer versus the hunter, we’re given one brief featurette on the film, one on Saleka’s presentation of Lady Raven (including song-writing), three deleted scenes, and one extended concert scene. While I’m absolutely willing to admit that Saleka’s songs are great, possessing that pop quality that enters ones ears and nestles in (looks like they released a full 14-song soundtrack, for those interested (I am those; I am interested)), the lack of a feature-length commentary track or real in-depth exploration of the making of the film frustrates as it feels like a missed opportunity to enable folks who really enjoy Trap to go deeper. Given that Shyamalan has introduced preternatural beings into the city of Philly, having some way to confirm if Hartnett’s Butcher is another Beast (James McAvoy in Split) or Mr. Glass (Samuel L. Jackson in Unbreakable (2000)) or just a broken man taking out his pain on others. Trap doesn’t *need* to be connected to those stories and it certainly doesn’t appear as though Hayley Mills’s Dr. Grant is part of the underground crew tracking down and neutralizing supers as seen at the end of Glass (2019), but there’s room for speculation which bonus materials would help to elucidate. Even prior releases Knock at the Cabin (2023) and Old included both additional and longer featurettes, which makes this one all the more frustrating. For instance, Harnett (Oppenheimer; The Faculty) makes a comment about studying the psychology of serial killers, but that’s about all we get regarding his prep-work on the character. There’re a few comments from Mills (The Parent Trap) and Allison Pill (Snowpiercer) about their work, but, primarily, it’s focused on Shyamalan and Saleka, which would be fine if Lady Raven were the protagonist of the film, but she’s a late entry supporting character (more on that later), so it’s strange that the actor/singer would get so much focus in a brief behind-the-scenes featurette when she has her own separate one. The creative process is a collaborative one and the lack of focus on that aspect in the sole behind-the-scenes featurette exploring the film itself is, well, odd.
L-R: Josh Hartnett as Cooper and Ariel Donoghue as Riley in Warner Bros. Pictures’ crime drama thriller TRAP, a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures. © 2024 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.
The bright side is that the brevity of the special features means that there’s more space on the disc for the data. This translates to one of the best 4K UHD discs (data-wise) I’ve seen in recent memory. A 4K UHD disc maxes out at 128 Mbps (40 Mbps is standard HD quality) and Trap got as high as the low 100s and as low as the mid-80s Mbps. Unlike digital-heavy films, like Twisters (2024) or Thanksgiving (2023), which include quite a few computer-generated effects, a lot of Trap is in-camera, so the most often that the bitrate dropped is when the camera was focused on Lady Raven, possibly due to the screens behind her, but that’s conjecture as the featurettes don’t really explore the stage production portion. This translates to a solid visual presentation that creates opportunities for beautiful visual contrasts in several arena-specific scenes such as when Cooper and Riley are watching the show and color is added by the performance. The lack of light sourcing gives the shots of the audience a realistic darkness from which there’s greater contrast when the stage turns on red lights, shrouding the attendees in a deep blood red, or Lady Raven asks the audience to turn on their own camera lights, illuminating the space with a clear, bright white. The colors are more muted outside of the arena, which is to say, more natural, adding to the cruelty that Cooper engages in as he tries to escape by grounding it visually. Cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom (Challengers; Call Me By Your Name) creates a specific visual language for the film that’s reminiscent of The Sixth Sense in that it’s not extravagant or other-worldly, imbuing the film with terror by virtue of its realism. In terms of the audio, the 4K UHD presentation includes a Dolby Atmos track, but the EoM office isn’t capable of testing that track with our Yamaha 5.1 surround system. However, we can state that what does come through the 5.1, especially in the concert sequences, is immersive and engaging. One really does feel like we’re experiencing what Riley is, enabling us to open ourselves to the music. The only complaint about the audio is the ability to hear things clearly that we absolutely shouldn’t given how much of the narrative is perspective-driven, but that’s not a fault of the technical but of the execution. To that end, the dialogue is clear and clean, something that matters a great deal as Cooper tends to get up close with those he’s talking to. The scene between Cooper and Pill’s Rachel is remarkable — a two-person conversation executed by two capable actors whose entire skillset, physical and verbal delivery, is put to the test, culminating in a showdown of wits and presumption that brings about a satisfying end.
L-R: Josh Hartnett, Saleka Night Shyamalan, and Director M. Night Shyamalan on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ crime drama thriller TRAP, a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Sabrina Lantos. © 2024 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.
The concept of Trap is fascinating and the execution in the first act is deliciously tension-filled as we watch Cooper problem-solve his way into, out of, and through the law enforcement in the arena. A lot of this is due to Hartnett, whose performance is quiet and calculated so that even the smallest micro-expression has meaning, with the remaining success being in how the actor is shot so that his already tall stature comes off as larger and more menacing. We come to believe in his cruelty, his methodical precision, and his coldness to anyone outside of his own family so that we almost root for him to be more clever than Dr. Grant. When Shyamalan’s script stays focused on Cooper, the narrative is at its most tense; “will” he get away is not the question in the first two acts, but “how,” making for some truly fun (albeit dark) moments as he tests the various security measures in place by either sacrificing someone or just acting as if he belongs. Even when Cooper does breach the defenses and gets away, when it remains on him, the film maintains a steady grip, but it loosens too much by the prominence of Lady Raven through the second act, making the other weaker elements more visible. For instance, if Dr. Grant is as good as various expositional moments tell us (she’s caught 10 serial killers, already), then why does it make sense to have such a large law enforcement presence so far in advance of the start of the show? Security is one thing that any concert goer can understand, but Cooper notices the install of cameras, the arriving SWAT members, and other tactical elements that either should’ve been in place well before the start of the show or arrived after Lady Raven takes the stage. Additionally, certain elements of the setup don’t track, such as Riley’s comment about her delight that Lady Raven added a surprise afternoon show during the ride over, thus implying to us, the audience, that the entire concert was requested by Dr. Grant to lure in Cooper *except* we later learn that a ripped receipt for the Lady Raven show was discovered at a Butcher crime scene, thereby implying that this show as not originally part of the sting and would then be incorporated. In that case, if it’s more last minute, how was there time to create codewords and passcards specific to the sting operation, provide training to *all* the staff at the venue, do a complete psych de-brief for Lady Raven (for reasons?), but not have time to enhance security at the venue? As one watches, there’s a sense that the dragnet is strongest when the narrative needs it to be and, likewise, weakest, rather than offering consistent logic.
L-R: Josh Hartnett as Cooper and Ariel Donoghue as Riley in Warner Bros. Pictures’ crime drama thriller TRAP, a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures. © 2024 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Much like Old feels less effective due to the time spent explaining the beach, Trap is less interesting due to the time spent focused not on Cooper. Hartnett brings the kind of compelling danger we haven’t seen from him since The Salesman in Sin City (2005), though his turn as Boy Sweat Dave in Wrath of Man (2021) certainly allowed for more use of his physicality. The point, if you will, is that Trap is a solid flick when Hartnett’s Cooper is at the center and, without additional on-disc materials to provide the chance to explore why the narrative does what it does, there’s no reason to press it further. Except that’s one of the best parts of watching a Shyamalan film — the investigation afterwards. Without primary sources, though, everything turns to useless conjecture. If you don’t mind that, thanks to the really solid on-disc presentation, at least folks can be satisfied.
Trap Special Features*:
- Setting the Trap: A New M. Night Shyamalan Experience
- Saleka as Lady Raven
- Three (3) Deleted Scenes
- Extended Concert Scene: “Where Did She Go”
* Available on Premium Digital Ownership, 4K UHD and Blu-ray only.
Available on VOD and digital August 30th, 2024.
Available on Max October 25th, 2024.
Available on 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD November 5th, 2024.
For more information, head to the official Warner Bros. Pictures Trap webpage.
Final Score: 3 out of 5.
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Categories: Home Video, Reviews, streaming
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