Controversial thriller director M. Night Shyamalan is back. It seems the success of Split and Glass is still lending him credibility, even though his films before and after—Old, Knock at the Cabin, After Earth, and The Last Airbender—were nothing short of insults to the audience’s intelligence.
Unfortunately, his latest movie Trap is no exception.
Trap offers a captivating premise: serial killer Cooper, who has multiple victims secretly imprisoned, walks into a pop star’s concert with his daughter, only to realize something is off. The venue is crawling with police, surveillance cameras are placed everywhere, and a profiler is orchestrating a mysterious operation. Through a casual chat with a merch seller, Cooper discovers the truth: the entire concert is a massive trap to capture him. The question is: how will he escape?
This premise is revealed in the trailers for Trap. As both the writer and director, Shyamalan makes no effort to hide Cooper’s true identity from the audience. What’s bolder, though, is his attempt to get us to sympathize with the serial killer, and even root for his escape. This moral alignment mechanism was a technique frequently used by Shyamalan’s cinematic idol, Alfred Hitchcock: whether in Psycho, Shadow of a Doubt, or Strangers on a Train, Hitchcock used narrative tools and visual techniques to either momentarily or continuously create empathy for villains, giving audiences the thrill of experiencing the dark allure of crime. It’s also a way for the director to challenge the audience’s morality.
Shyamalan excels during the concert scenes. His carefully designed shots, staging, and camera movement create a palpable tension, and along with Josh Hartnett’s strong performance and the quirky humor sprinkled throughout, Trap manages to transcend the average Hollywood thriller during this part of the film.
But what the trailer for Trap doesn’t reveal is that the movie isn’t confined to the concert venue. By the 54th minute, Cooper foolishly reveals his identity to the pop star, Lady Raven, and manages to escape the arena using her limousine. From that moment on, the film’s quality plummets. The characters’ increasingly nonsensical decisions, Cooper’s near-magical teleportation-like escapes, and the story's loss of tension due to the abrupt shift in setting, all render the movie completely implausible, turning it into a massive attack on the audience's common sense.
I’m not sure how to describe Shyamalan as a filmmaker. He undeniably has a strong visual instinct, making him one of the best directors in Hollywood when it comes to telling a story through the camera. However, his absurd writing, lack of natural dialogue, and weak plotting make him stand out as one of the most baffling screenwriters in Hollywood history.
The success of The Sixth Sense seems to have locked him into a dependency on plot twists: in nearly every one of his subsequent films, Shyamalan feels the need to insert a twist, often for the sake of it, which frequently leads to unbalanced narratives that defy both logic and basic human nature.
After observing Shyamalan’s 30-year career and enduring his films time and again, it seems safe to conclude that there will be no twist in his career. He will likely continue making movies that defy logic and insult common sense, and the fans drawn in by his few successes will eventually be driven away by his refusal to change course and his declining film quality.
Unless he takes my advice:
1. Seriously Change His Course to Make Comedies
Shyamalan’s movies often contain humor, though at times it’s hard to tell if he’s joking, as he often seems very serious about absurd setups, like Cooper’s ridiculous, consequence-free decisions in Trap.
However, there are moments when Shyamalan knows he’s being funny. In Trap, Cooper’s attempts to come across as a warm, harmless “girl dad,” while unable to hide his his crazed eyes, offer brilliant moments of dark humor.
When Cooper takes Lady Raven home, his already fractured family tries to pretend they’re a perfect American household, masking their awkwardness with forced smiles and feigned surprise, which is humorously awkward.
Not to mention the absurd moment when a dim-witted merch seller proudly shows the serial killer photos of his murder scenes.
Shyamalan clearly has a sense of humor, even if it’s often clumsy. But that doesn’t mean he can’t use this to entertain audiences. He could even turn his awkwardness and quirky style into a signature trait. His low-budget The Visit managed to revive his career largely due to its humor. If Shyamalan could let go of his obsession with plot twists and his clumsy psychological analyses of fringe characters, and embrace his natural comedic sense to make a few horror comedies, it might just turn his career around.
2. Stop Writing Scripts — Let Someone Else Do It
If Shyamalan isn’t willing to take my first suggestion, if he insists on being a “serious” thriller director, then at least he should take my second suggestion: give up his obsession with writing his own films. He needs to reflect on whether his insistence on screenwriting is about improving his films’ quality or simply to satisfy his vanity in seeing “Written & Directed by M. Night Shyamalan” on the movie poster.
Let’s reiterate: Shyamalan is a highly skilled visual storyteller and master of tension. His shot composition and camera placements are both unique and meticulous, and his ability to use storyboards to heighten suspense is among the best in Hollywood. But when all this craftsmanship serves an inherently absurd story, it becomes pointless. Shyamalan is a gifted director and a deeply flawed screenwriter. It would be a waste of his visual talent if his weak storytelling continued to undermine it.
So, to save Shyamalan from himself, I propose a bold yet obvious solution: let him hire someone else to write his scripts! These writers may not produce groundbreaking stories, but they would at least bring basic credibility to the plot, characters, and dialogue, preventing us from feeling like we’re watching a poorly executed farce. With a solid story framework, Shyamalan’s visual talent could be put to good use. If applied to his own flawed narratives, it’s like putting lipstick on a pig; but if applied to a story above average, Shyamalan could work magic and elevate it to greatness. We’ll be watching closely.
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