Trap: M. Night Shyamalan tests our morality in this twisted family thriller

“I have a dark side,” says a mother (Marnie McPhail) menacingly to fireman Cooper Adams (Josh Hartnett), as she pushes for a reconciliation between their respective, once inseparable tween daughters. Both parents are in Philadelphia’s (fictional) Tanaka Arena as chaperones at the concert of popstar Lady Raven. Surrounded by selfish people – not just that bullying mother, but Lady Raven’s entitled, sleazy fellow co-singers, or the young girl who pushes in front of others to get a last T-shirt, Cooper is a good, considerate dad, rewarding Riley (Ariel Donoghue) with concert tickets for her good grades, and making sure that she stays safe in the vast venue. But he too has a dark side. He is, secretly, a sociopath and a serial killer (known as ‘the Butcher’ for the dismembered state of his victims) – and as the police and SWAT, under directions from FBI profiler Dr Josephine Grant (Hayley Mills), surround and swamp the place, Cooper realises that a trap has been set, where he is the target and there is no easy way out. 

Writer/director M. Night Shyamalan is, obviously, famous for his narrative twists, and Trap certainly has a couple of those in store, but this is primarily a taut puzzle box of a film, tracking its cunning protagonist’s attempts to figure his way out of a near-impossible predicament, while also challenging the viewer with the similarly difficult task of deconstructing, let alone reconciling, the contradictory aspects of Cooper’s character. This caring parent, and loving husband to Rachel (Alison Pill), is also a ruthless murderer who carves up his prey to literalise and project his belief that even that even those who seem to have it ‘together’ are really just in pieces. The paradox of Cooper’s split nature divides us too, as we follow closely his efforts to escape, and find ourselves simultaneously desiring that this cold-blooded killer be caught, and that he get away to continue being dad to his adoring daughter. Here Shyamalan plays the Hitchcockian game of aligning us with someone who is repellent and empty, and so confronts us with the vicarious limits of our own humanity and monstrosity. 

Trap is ultimately a family film. Cooper’s fraught relationship with his own departed mother (Marcia Bennett) encapsulates deep, if hidden, dysfunction. But more salutary models of parent-child relationship can be discerned both in Cooper’s love for Riley and in Shyamalan’s collaboration with daughter Saleka, who, a singer-songwriter in her own right, convincingly commands the stage as Lady Raven, while embodying the selflessness of which Cooper is incapable. These tensions allow family’s light and dark sides to dance together on the same stage, with every step butchering our moral sympathies. 

► Trap is in UK cinemas now.