Trap

M. Night Shyamalan has gone on some epic cold streaks before, but his most recent one suggests he’s finally tapped out of good judgment.

Despite consistently dreaming up compelling ideas, his execution is as rusty as ever in Trap, a brainless, lifeless, would-be thriller that, along with Knock at the Cabin and Old, offers further evidence that revisiting the Unbreakable universe in Split and Glass was his last gasp of sustained semi-brilliance.

If Warner Bros. had as much faith in Shyamalan’s filmmaking as Disney did 25 years ago with its coy marketing of The Sixth Sense, perhaps they wouldn’t have spoiled Trap’s best idea in its trailer: the Lady Raven (Saleka Shyamalan) concert that suburban Philadelphia dad Cooper (Josh Hartnett) and his teenage daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) attend is but a ruse to capture rampaging serial killer The Butcher — who just so happens to be Cooper!

With that twist out in the open, Shyamalan’s weaknesses are exposed early and often, and he receives little support beyond Debbie DeVilla’s ambitious production design and decent cinematography from Sayombhu Mukdeeprom (Challengers).

Hartnett has never been a great actor, but he’s especially embarrassing here. Though respectable in Oppenheimer and Wrath of Man, this is his first starring role in quite some time, and while the quantity of screen time is certainly there, the quality is not.

The latest performer to be Shyamalanized, Hartnett’s work is on par with Mark Wahlberg’s The Happening turn in the awkwardness department as the filmmaker encourages his star to behave in an exaggerated Ward Cleaver manner during his conversations at the arena.

But this is ShyamalanLand, where hardly anyone speaks like actual humans anymore, with the exception of Donoghue and Jonathan Langdon (Buffaloed) as the kindly merch salesman and true crime enthusiast who accidentally spills the beans to Cooper about the FBI’s plans to root out The Butcher.

In addition to the distracting tonal dissonance, Trap yearns for an R rating. Unwilling to risk the potential big bucks of a PG-13 rating, Shyamalan is dishonest about the grisly threat The Butcher represents, rendering this mass murderer about as malicious as most Agatha Christie villains, who talk a big game but feel fairly impotent once they’re finally caught.

Though Cooper is quite crafty at eluding the authorities at the arena, he’s aided by strange, unrealistic concert dynamics such as numerous breaks in between stage set-ups that encourage fans to leave their seats for extended periods. (Apparently Shyamalan hasn’t been to one of his pop star daughter’s shows.)

Cooper’s greatest accomplices, however, are insanely convenient reveals of essential information — via overheard conversations and perfectly-timed walkie-talkie chatter — that keep him one step ahead of FBI profiler Dr. Josephine Grant (the great Hayley Mills, reduced to a child’s idea of the character’s job) and her team.

Eye-rolling as it all is, Trap has a certain contained charm within the arena. But once it goes beyond those walls, the deflation begins in earnest, hastened by Shyamalan’s daughter essentially becoming the film’s main character. It’s the most flagrant case of nepotism since Sofia Coppola stunk up The Godfather Part III, though at least the future writer/director of Lost in Translation had the good sense not to sing ear-splitting pop songs while making gnocci with Andy Garcia.

The more information that’s revealed in the home stretch, the dumber everything becomes. Attempts at explaining Cooper’s “psychology” are ridiculous and laughably cliché, the authorities’ inconsistent behavior elicits plentiful “huh?”s, and once we know who clued the FBI in on The Butcher’s identity, the whole film falls apart as far more simple potential solutions arise.

It’s all reminiscent of Shyamalan’s lowest lows, and only his most die-hard fans can pretend that he has anything left in the tank. He appears primed to top his five-film, decade-long run of duds from Lady in the Water (2006) to The Visit (2015), and he’ll have one less viewer in attendance going forward.

Grade: D. Rated PG-13. Now playing at AMC River Hills 10, Carolina Cinemark, and Regal Biltmore Grande.

(Photo: Warner Bros.)