Every week, Netflix reveals its Top 10 lists for the week prior, ranking its most-viewed movies and TV shows. M. Night Shyamalan’s 2024 film Trap, which arrived on Netflix last week, was probably better known for the memes it spawned than for the content of the movie itself when it came out last summer. (That the film’s 15 minutes of fame came from the internet and not from the cinema is peak 2020s. See also: Madame Web.) Trap seems to be catching on for a second time in its short lifespan thanks to its release on Netflix: It hit No. 4 on the platform’s Top Movies list for the week of March 10 to 16. But this time around, it seems like people might just be watching the movie for the sake of the movie. And they should — it’s a fun movie.
Trap is Shyamalan’s 16th film, and it probably won’t be remembered as fondly as his 1999 breakout hit The Sixth Sense. But then, will any of his films? Despite its ridiculous premise, its aptitude for creating a viral moment and its mixed reviews — which range from “infuriating” to “brilliant” — it’s a great time, and it’s no surprise that people are seeking it out. Thrilling, silly and often funny, it stars Josh Hartnett as a suburban dad who is teased to be a serial killer trying to evade the police. It also has great supporting performances from Alison Pill as his wife and M. Night Shyamalan’s daughter, Saleka Night Shyamalan, a budding pop star in real life who plays a world-famous pop star. (Some people online criticized this casting move as nepotism, but nepos gonna nepo and that’s not a hill I’m going to die on. I liked her.)
Hartnett plays Cooper, a devoted dad who’s also secretly a serial killer called the Butcher. He’s holding a man hostage in a basement somewhere as we speak! To reward his daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) for good grades, Cooper snags a pair of concert tickets to see Riley’s favorite singer, Lady Raven.
The moment that turned the movie into a viral talking point occurs early in the film when Cooper, speaking to a merch guy in the arena, learns that the concert is a setup to catch him. “You know The Butcher?” the concert employee, played by Jonathan Langdon, asks Cooper. “The freakin’ nut job that goes around chopping people up? The feds hear that he’s gonna be here today. So they set up a trap for him. This whole concert is a trap.” This exposition was too perfect and too on the nose for the keyboard auteurs at home to ignore, hence the arrival of one of the year’s biggest memes.
While much of the movie is about Cooper’s frantic attempts to exit the concert while evading the feds, he eventually uses Lady Raven herself as a shield, threatening her and the life of the man he’s holding hostage so she’ll cooperate and help him escape. As with all Shyamalan movies, there are plot twists, there’s tension and it all leads up to a final moment that probably made most audiences shake their heads in disbelief or laugh at its ridiculousness. I’m in my fluff movie era, though, and to be honest, I’d rather watch Hartnett play a sociopath murderer with mommy issues (a real plot point) than watch a dour drama about serious real-world issues because of escapism.
I can’t write about Trap without mentioning my favorite Easter egg in the film, the inclusion of actor Hayley Mills as the FBI profiler tasked with hunting down the Butcher. Mills became famous in the 1960s as a Walt Disney film star, most notably in the original version of The Parent Trap — maybe my favorite film as a child, which is why this connection is so exciting to me. In that film, she plays dual roles as twins who “trap” her divorced parents in order to get them back together. It’s a subtle bit of wordplay, but here she is, cast as a woman trying to trap a parent yet again — only this parent is also a killer terrorizing the streets of Philly.
Trap happens to be the only M. Night Shyamalan film on Netflix at the moment, and while it’s not a great movie (its 57% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes feels about right), it’s a tight 105 minutes of pure fun that will still get you to bed before it’s too late.
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