“Trap” feels like a truly neutral Shyamalan film – for better or for worse

It must be difficult to market an M. Night Shyamalan film. Do you give away too much in the first trailer for a film like Catchand it detracts from the audience’s experience of the film. If too little is revealed, there is no clear incentive for said audience to go to the cinema in the first place. Then there is the balancing act that the director himself must perform in order to unfold the story: Catch is about a serial killer named Cooper (Josh Hartnett), who goes to a pop concert with his daughter and discovers that the event is – warning – an elaborate trap to catch him.

This is all revealed in the trailer and in the first 30 minutes of the film. In a different, perhaps better version of this film, this early reveal would have been disastrous – it would have undermined the effectiveness of a major plot twist. As the film is – an entertaining but half-hearted execution of a killer concept that relies more on emotion than suspense – finding it out so early is just a minor downer.

Catch lets us fall in medias reswith father and daughter on their way to a concert. The trap is already set and all the actors are in motion. Cooper goes in, distracted by his daughter’s excitement and the duty he feels as a father. Let me take this moment to say: The sooner you banish any rational thought about how illogical a concert trap by law enforcement is, the better! As a film, Catch isn’t particularly interested in convincing the viewer how that might work logistically; that’s not really what Shyamalan’s film is about, and while it’s sometimes distractingly bad, it’s also sometimes delightfully funny. Instead, the focus, at least at first, stays mostly narrow: on Cooper, his relationship with his daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue, the film’s sentimental heart), and how difficult it can be to balance serial killing and parenthood. The struggle!

Much of the film’s execution rests on Harnett’s capable shoulders. A former teen heartthrob who has recently made notable appearances in eclectic projects such as Penny novel, OppenheimerAnd The bearHartnett is convincing both as firefighter Cooper, who is a girl and a father, and as the insanely focused serial killer The Butcher. He is clearly having a great time, and his likability is the most convincing tool in his arsenal of evasive maneuvers. This is where Hartnett’s boyish good looks (even in his 40s) come in his favor; they have smoothed out into something, light more relatable, which supports Shyamalan’s exploration of cultural assumptions as Cooper uses his status as an all-American (read: white) family man to escape the trap. It’s enough to make you wish the film had gone a little longer with the reveal of Cooper’s serial murder, playing with our own assumptions about who gets to be a good guy in the film and who doesn’t. Unfortunately, it’s hard to be an M. Night Shyamalan film.

The film’s staging of the concert, a production in itself, is also impressive. As someone who has attended many arena shows filled with screaming fans in recent years, most of it felt just right (except maybe how many people got up from their seats during the show and wandered through the concession stand). Holding the whole thing together is Saleka, a real-life R&B artist and daughter of Shyamalan, who plays the fictional pop star Lady Raven. The most successful performance Catch does is convince viewers that this is a real concert, and in many ways this film works better as a showcase for Saleka’s skills as a songwriter and singer than as a twisty thriller. Riley, Cooper’s teenage daughter, is obsessed with Lady Raven, and she and all the other extras at the concert know every lyric to every song. There’s a fanatical authenticity in the way Riley, Cooper’s teenage daughter, is obsessed with Lady Raven, and how she and all the other extras at the concert know every lyric to every song.

Maybe it’s because the film itself sometimes feels like a multi-million dollar show from a father to his daughter (Shyamalan puts all the other Nepo dads in the shade), CatchThe biggest risks are in Cooper’s relationship with his own daughter. The film doesn’t let on that Cooper’s joy at witnessing his daughter’s joy at the Lady Raven concert isn’t 100% genuine, or that he isn’t seriously involved in the schemes of the teenage girls who have alienated Riley from her circle of friends. He’s a serial killer who delights in dismembering innocent people, but he’s also a really good father! Catch is ultimately too distracted by half-hearted explorations of other themes – like Cooper’s relationship with his absent mother or the career of profiler Dr. Grant (Hayley Mills) – to really shake us with these themes. In general Catch reminded me of serial killer TV series You or Hannibalbut as a film it had far less time to artfully navigate the discordant key changes that a story with a killer protagonist dictates.

But there are moments when this main storyline shines. In one particularly effective scene, Cooper watches from the sidelines as his daughter gets the chance to dance onstage. He looks on at her joy, the lights of the performance illuminating his smile. We’ve seen this character use his grin to get away with things time and time again, but here his emotions aren’t calculated. The film lingers, living in this moment when everyone seems happy, allowing the devastating potential for it all to fall apart to grow. “Your daughter will remember this day for the rest of her life,” a well-meaning publicist tells Cooper. The audience, and Cooper, sit with the dramatic irony of the statement, wondering how exactly the prophecy will come to pass.

Within the Shyamalan pantheon Catch approaches the superficial tension of Old or the kitschy joys of The event than the raw, tension-filled wildness of Splits. It has a bit too much on its plate and a bit too much heart to be a pure thrill ride, and it’s worth adjusting your expectations accordingly. Whatever else Catch may be, it is a Shyamalan film through and through – ambitious in its original concept, unfocused in its thematic exploration and delighting in its own twists. 25 years after The sixth Sense blew us away for the first time, at a time when every other advertisement for the Summer Olympics Advertising the “creative” power of AIthere is something incredibly valuable about a director being able to make the films he wants to make. Even if a Shyamalan film doesn’t amaze us, if it pulls the rug out from under us, there is something ever sweeter about the very human way in which they all try.

Catch is now in theaters.