Spoilers ahead for the ending of Trap. There was a time, back in the early 2000s, when just about every new movie by M. Night Shyamalan ended with a big twist .
(It’s how he got his unfair reputation as a one-hoodwink pony.) These days, however, the writer-director of The Sixth Sense , Unbreakable , and The Village has mostly moved on from his famous/infamous tendency to pull the rug out from under the audience in the closing minutes. There is, for example, no earth-shattering surprise lurking at the finish line of his new film, Trap .
That is, unless you count the fact that his latest divisive, proudly illogical thriller has a great premise, but only really gets interesting after it abandons it. Even if you haven’t seen Trap yet, you probably know what it’s about. The trailer lets that cat right out of the bag.
Josh Harnett is Cooper, a sweet girl dad who takes his teenage daughter to a pop concert. Only it turns out that Cooper is also..
. a vicious, at-large serial killer dubbed The Butcher. And the authorities — responding to a lead that he’s going to be there — have turned the whole show into a sting operation to catch him.
The first half of the movie is set entirely within the Philly arena, as Cooper tries to balance playing chaperone to the superfan under his care and finding a way to slip past the small army of police officers roaming the venue and guarding its exits. Eventually, Cooper does escape, making the unlikely decision to come clean to the pop star.