M. Night Shyamalan has been writing some of the most original high-concept films to hit the silver screen for the last 25 years, including his latest project Trap. There is something unexpecting lurking around every narrative corner, taking the viewers down roads to a cumulative moment that may or may not work.
Trap, Shyamalan’s 16th feature film, leans fully into a Hitchcockian thriller, a director Shyamalan has long been compared to since his break-out hit, The Sixth Sense, but with a signature twist. Rather than tell a harrowing story through the perspective of the police, Shyamalan plays the cat-and-mouse game through the POV of a killer.
But why do we root for the charming manic dad? At the end of the day, Cooper (Josh Harnett) is still a twister killer with a person trapped in a basement somewhere, right? This is an M. Night Shyamalan movie, so nothing is ever as it seems.
A Cat and Mouse Game
Some of the best thrillers feature constant pursuits, near captures, and repeated escapes from seemingly inescapable situations. The delicate dance between the pursuer and perpetrator means that something unknown is waiting just around the corner.
Shyamalan leans into the cat-and-mouse game throughout Trap to build a complex narrative that blurs the line between good and evil. Sure, we know that being a serial killer is evil. But still, we find ourselves wanting to get away with Cooper as he uses his charm and wits to avoid the police who block his every exit at the Lady Raven (Saleka Night Shyamalan) concert.
The tension is already baked into the structure of a cat-and-mouse game, pulling the audience to the edge of their seats as they search the screen for any clues of what’s to come. As the threat gets closer, Cooper’s decision-making skills must be quick and calculated. How will this next step aid or hurt him? How will it affect his daughter’s good time?
Someone has to win in the end, but the question the audience is left wondering who.
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Trap Turns a Simple Premise on Its Head
If this cat-and-mouse premise sounds simple, it’s because it is. The premise has been greatly utilized in film noir films like The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep. These films often feature a hard-boiled detective pursuing an elusive criminal.
Trap follows the premise, turning away from the detective and showing us the perspective of the mouse trying to outrun the traps set in place.
Shyamalan paints the story into an interesting corner: how does a guy with no way out escape? It is the challenge that pushes the story forward, giving Cooper momentum as he and the audience navigate the puzzle laid out by the screenwriter.
The perspective flip works because the stakes are so clearly established at the beginning of the film. Cooper is attending the concert for his daughter (gold-star dad moment) but occasionally sneaks away to monitor the person in a basement on his phone. His blood-lust as the Butcher and his desire to be a good dad are crammed into the same space, forced to duke it out over which version of Cooper will be leaving the stadium.
If the story was told through the perspective of Dr. Josephine Grant (Hayley Mills), an FBI profiler, the story’s only stake would be that one of the small pool of men attending the pop concert was a killer. We wouldn’t know if he planned to kill someone there or why they needed to catch him there. The stakes are relatively low compared to Shyamalan’s chosen perspective, making it easier for the audience to disengage with whatever is happening on screen.
When the killer is trying to escape, the audience is excited to see how they’ll weasel their way out of any situation that could lead to their capture. There’s a thrill to almost get caught.
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‘Trap’ (2024)
The Heart of Horror in Trap
But Trap only works if we are rooting for Cooper, and we definitely are rooting for him. It helps that Hartnett’s disarming good looks and charm that pigeonholed him as a generic leading man can smooth out any surface-level concerns we might have about him being a killer, but it is his relationship with his daughter that makes us believe he could be a good guy.
Inspired by his love for his daughters (one of whom is even featured in the film), Shyamalan brought his own fears to Cooper by putting his daughter’s unconditional love for him on the line.
We see Cooper’s deep care for his daughter as he attends her favorite pop singer’s concert, checks in with her after discovering she has been shunned by a friend, and sympathizes with the youth lost in other people’s lives. At times, it feels like Cooper is his daughter’s only friend. We’ve all experienced adolescence, and many of us wished we had a parent involved in ensuring our happiness, as Cooper does. To root for his daughter’s happiness to to root for Cooper’s.
But this is a thriller. As we buy into Cooper’s warped perception of reality, which portrays him as a good guy who occasionally does bad things, Shyamalan reminds us that a person is handcuffed in his murder house.
This balance of heart and horror can be tricky, but it helps establish the reason why Cooper wants to escape rather than leaning into the default reasoning why a serial killer would want to run from the police.
‘Trap’ (2024)
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Even when you feel like an idea has been painted into a corner, Trap shows that there is always another way out.
The cat and mouse premise is simple and has roots in one of the most prolific genres in film, but there is always a new way to look at it. Whether there is a mouse being chased by a cat that is being chased by a dog or a new perspective to see how the mouse outmaneuvers the cat, it’s an idea that can go the distance if it has the stakes to keep that audience at the edge of their seats.
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The post How ‘Trap’ Makes Us Root for the Killer With No Place to Go appeared first on ScreenCraft.
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Author: Alyssa Miller
