When you’re a psychopath, especially a psychopathic killer, life ain’t easy.
I mean, it’s not your fault that you have no empathy or remorse. It’s not your fault that you don’t feel the things you’re supposed to feel while doing, uh, questionable things. You’ve just been built differently.
So the task of appearing normal is, well, difficult! You always have to be on point and wear that charming mask, that patina of ordinary. Generating normal emotions takes so much concentration and work. One little relaxed slip and you could spill the whole plate of psychopathic beans. And what a mess that would make.
Cooper is one such psychopath. He knows how to project “expected” things. He knows the right frumpy jacket to wear, he’s practiced his “good dad” goofy smile. And his “nice guy” patter is award worthy. In fact, he’s a psychopath who can pass almost unnoticed in a crowd these days.
It’s frankly exhausting, but he knows his routine.
Why, he’s even gone out of his way to buy his daughter, Riley, tickets to the Lady Raven concert she’s been so excited to experience.
The poor girl has no inkling of what true excitement really is: that look of fear in a victim’s eyes, the muffled grunts as they choke. But Cooper will, at least for tonight, pretend that he doesn’t know about that pulse-pounding excitement either. He’ll simply be excited for his daughter’s excitement.
However, while an average dad might just grit his teeth against the overly loud music and screeching, gyrating teen girls in the crowd, the hidden side of Cooper can’t help but notice other things. There are throngs of police everywhere, for instance. Do they always have so many cops and security cameras at a typical pop concert? And do those officers usually pull random dads out of the crowd while looking … really tense?
Cooper slips on his nice guy face and eases out of the concert hall.
He asks a concession clerk what’s going on, with a well-practiced chortle and grin. And the guy whispers back that he isn’t supposed to say anything, but it seems that the police are staking out the concert ‘cause they’re pretty sure a killer is in the building. There’s even an FBI profiler who’s predicting the Butcher’s moves.
That’s what they’ve labeled the killer, you see. They know so few details about the man, but they call him the Butcher because of how he’s cut up his victims. What a foolish name, Cooper thinks. What inane and stupid people!
But Cooper doesn’t say any of that. Instead, he struggles to keep his practiced face in place as he feels his two worlds—family and personal—beginning to squeeze ever closer to each other. He oohs and ahhs at the concession fellow’s words. And with a typical nice guy nod he strolls away.
However, as average dad Cooper walks back to the concert floor where Riley is waiting, he starts to feel something. He’s beginning to feel, what is it, angry? No, it’s something closer to rage. In fact, for this particular average looking dad, the thing he’s feeling is something completely new.
And as he quickly checks exits, security doors and employee entrances, Cooper begins to realize that rage is … exciting!
Despite Cooper’s lack of remorse or empathy for others, he somehow does love his daughter Riley. In fact, it’s the recognition that he’s about to lose her from his life that pushes him to display real emotion. And Riley shows her love for her dad, even after she realizes that he’s done terrible things. Their father/daughter relationship is sincere and Cooper takes time to encourage Riley to make good choices when it comes to other people.
The pop star Lady Raven puts her own welfare at risk in an attempt to save one of Cooper’s captives.
None.
Lady Raven wears several outfits in concert that are a bit skimpy. And some female dancers in her dance crew wear formfitting dancewear. Lady Raven’s fellow artist, The Thinker, is very effeminate; he winks at Cooper and seductively sways past him with a smirk.
Cooper takes off his shirt and stands bare-chested at one point.
A large contingent of police officers at the concert search the crowd. They forcefully drag men who fit a certain profile away for questioning.
The concession vendor, Jamie, tells Cooper that he’s been following the murderous action of the Butcher for weeks. He has a picture of one of the murder victims on his phone. We don’t see that image, but we do see a picture of a police murder scene—showing sheet-covered body parts on the ground.
Police shoot at a vehicle, blowing out its tires and windows. Cooper shoves a woman down a flight of stairs as a distraction. He also causes a deep frier to explode. We hear a woman screaming in pain afterward and later see her covered in red burns.
We see a video of a chained man locked in what appears to be a basement laundry room. Cooper shows the video to someone and threatens to asphyxiate the man with a push of a button.
A man is shot by several tasers and falls painfully to the ground. Before falling, though, he grabs one of his attackers and moves to gouge the man’s eyes out before being stopped.
Cooper holds a large butcher knife with the intention of murdering someone with it. He also handcuffs a young woman in the back of a car in an attempt to abduct her, but she escapes.
One f-word and one s-word join one use each of “d–n,” “b–ch” and “h—.” God’s name is misused about 25 times (once in combination with “d–n”).
Someone puts a sedative in Cooper’s food, which leaves him staggering. It’s implied that a young woman in the concert crowd is feeling ill after drinking too much. The artist Lady Raven uses an inhaler between songs.
We see a group of men from behind standing at urinals in a men’s bathroom. It’s implied that Cooper’s psychological struggles were exacerbated by his less-than-positive relationship with his mother. (He sees images of the deceased woman at several different times.) A teen girl gets angry at her mom and splashes the woman with her cup of soda while screaming at her.
Trap is supposed to be a kettle-on-the stove-top type of thriller—something similar to what Hitchcock might have created way back when. It’s easy to see that M. Night Shyamalan wrote, directed and produced the whole package with that idea in his crosshairs.
However, those “possibilities” feel a little trapped in a rambling film that doesn’t quite work. The script definitely needed a few more rewrites to get all of its jumbled pieces to fit. And the end result is more schizo than Psycho.
Content-wise, foul language is probably the biggest issue in this PG-13 thriller. The violence feels about like what you’d expect on a typical episode of, say, C.S.I. It’s more implied than shown, with those grim implications gradually ramping up the narrative stakes as the story lurches inexorably toward its conclusion.
The narrative concept and star Josh Hartnett’s efforts are both solid. But the core story here, while restrained compared to many other offerings out there these days, is still a dark one.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
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