Saturday is Horror Day #191 - Trap

 Trap

Cooper (Josh Hartnett) is the kind of father teen-aged girls dream of when he gets tickets for them to the concert Riley (Ariel Donoghue) is dying to see! She's had issues at school recently with being bullied by a group of girls she thought were her friends, and Lady Raven (Saleka Shyamalan) is her very favorite performer.  Riley knows the words to all her songs (although she doesn't sing them very well) as well as her dance moves.

As they make their way to their seats, Cooper can't help but notice a massive police presence in the venue, far more than a mere concert would warrant. He quickly figures out they are searching for him, everything is a trap, and he has to find a way to safely himself and his daughter out of this place.

I don't consider it a spoiler to reveal that Cooper is the serial killer the police are searching for, hence the title of the film. You can see this much from watching the trailer. Unfortunately, the trailer is more interesting than the film. We watch Cooper continually leaving his daughter alone as he tries to find his way out, which entailing a lot of perfect coincidences falling into place and everything going his way, including getting Lady Raven to choose his daughter as her Dream Girl.  Honestly, I felt as though he sleepwalked through is performance, and I do like Josh Hartnett. The girl playing his daughter was okay, but she needs more acting lessons. And Saleka Shyamalan does too. I wonder if she would have been cast if she weren't the director's daughter.

I watched this movie despite thinking Shyamalan hasn't done anything good since The Sixth Sense, and I won't watch anything else after seeing this. It's rather predictable, not very interesting, despite hopeful moments I thought might lead to something interesting... but they didn't. The twist at the end was not even logical and rather ambiguous. There is a small extra scene during the credits, if you make it that far. I had high hopes for this but those were dashed. Lackluster all the way around. I'll give this film 2.5 Stars.

On a side note, look for Hayley Mills as a police profiler. Nice to see her again. Sorry it was in this film.