M. Night Shyamalan Is Hamming It Up In 'Trap'
#283: "Trap," "Knox Goes Away," "A Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou," "Blackthorn"
Edition 283:
Hey movie lovers!
This week: An M. Night Shyamalan movie still means something in the summer movie schedule, especially after his trailer captivated everyone. So does the twist master pay it off? Plus, a directorial debut for Michael Keaton, a return to one of my all-time favs, and a pseudo-sequel you’ll never guess existed. In this week’s “Trailer Watch,” a surprisingly awesome-looking docudrama about SNL??
Trap
M. Night Shyamalan has two Oscar nominations in his career (zero wins), and although he won’t be adding to those totals with his latest, Trap, if there were an Academy Award for Best Dad I can promise you he’d be a runaway favorite this year.
Shyamalan, who has recently bounced around studios from one project to the next — a sign either of his fading market value or his ongoing appeal, in that everyone can talk themself into his next project — leveraged a new deal with Warner Bros. into distributing the debut feature of one of his daughters (boldly entitled The Strangers: Chapter 1, which actually performed okay commercially but was savaged by critics), and his own movie in which he cast his other daughter as a pop star who becomes one of the main characters of the film over the second half of its tight 1hr45min runtime.
It’s an important framing for me to understand Trap, and Shyamalan, a director who had as unimpeachable of a five year stretch of movies from 1999-2004 as any director ever (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, The Village) but whose style I have been generally allergic to ever since. 2019’s Glass remains one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen, 2021’s Old felt gimmicky and wooden, and last year’s Knock at the Cabin was a filmmaking tour-de-force that was once again hamstrung by Shyamalan’s janky writing.
By now it’s abundantly clear to me that I’m not and will never be a Shyamalan guy. His premises are incredibly simple, which makes them really easy to sell in a trailer (he makes great trailers), but there’s often not much to offer beyond the initial hook. His dialogue is stilted, he loves a good exposition dump (or 10), and his characters don’t seem like three-dimensional humans. Emotional storytelling this is not.
But once you see this movie through the lens of Shyamalan as hashtag Girl Dad, it all makes more sense. Shyamalan is one of the few “brand name” filmmakers who can get original movies he writes and directs independently financed at decent budgets — this one in the $30-40 million range — so why wouldn’t he make this movie about a literal dad who takes his teenage daughter to a concert (and his last movie was about protecting a pre-teen child at all costs) with a signature thriller spin. As any screenwriting book would tell you…write what you know.
The key to unlocking Shyamalan and Trap for me was the realization that they are intentionally trying to be absurd. That concert I mentioned turns out to be a ruse to trap a serial killer who is planning on attending (why would the police endanger thousands of children by trapping the killer among them, one might ask), and within 10 minutes we discover that our main character is himself “The Butcher” (not a spoiler because it’s in the trailer).
The plot unfolds in increasingly ridiculous machinations, which I was initially inclined to dismiss as juvenile until I realize that Shyamalan is in on the joke, and wants the audience to be in on it too. At this point in his career, he knows who he is and what he does, which is make visually impressive versions of schlocky genre fare with his signature twist ending.
Yes, his dialogue is just as unnatural as ever, but here there’s the readymade excuse that our protagonist is a literal psychopath mass-murderer. Yes, just about every element of the plot can be picked apart upon closer inspection, but the decisions are made for maximum effect on the audience (sometimes an eye roll and a smirk was the intention). While it’s not out-and-out funny, the movie is trying to be very fun, and I do think it mostly succeeds.
A good deal of credit for pulling off that fun has to go to lead actor Josh Hartnett, who is at the center of nearly every frame. He’s almost intentionally bad-acting to start the movie, telegraphing his evil turn, then turns up the intensity as the movie unfolds, eventually cresting in an incredible confrontation scene with his wife near the end. Though he hasn’t been a movie star in many years, it’s clear Harnett still has that center stage charisma.
I’m always going to be left wanting more out of Shyamalan, specifically because I think as a visual stylist and creator of iconography he’s just about as talented as they come. I’ve used past reviews to beg him to delegate writing duties to someone else, but clearly that’s never going to happen.
As long as he’s been in the business, keep in mind Shyamalan is only 54 years old. He still has many many movies ahead of him, though it remains to be seen where this movie leaves him in terms of budgets next time out. Trap is at $25 million box office after a week, so it’s clearly no runaway hit, but it has a decent change to leg out its break even point.
I know that as much as I complain, in a year or two another awesome trailer with an awesome premise is going to come along, and the Shyamalan hype cycle will fire up all over again. See you all then.
Something New
Knox Goes Away (Max): Whenever a well-known actor takes their first crack at directing, there’s this thing that happens where they call in every favor their modicum of fame has earned them. In the case of Michael Keaton, that’s worth enough to earn a cast that includes James Marsden and Al Pacino (!!) for what would otherwise look like a low budget production.
Keaton plays a hit man who gets diagnosed with rapidly progressing dementia, complicating one final job he must pull to rescue his son (Marsden) from a murder charge. It’s a clever premise, framed in a very classic, dark noir aesthetic (right down to the trumpet interstitial music), but the story itself steers away from that gritty, messy noir-like sensibility into something closer to white horse nobility, a trait Keaton is better known for. It serves him, as an actor, but I don’t think does many favors to the movie itself, which is competent but doesn’t transcend the bounds of the mushy middle for 2024 releases.
Something Old
The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2004, Amazon Prime): As I’ve said a couple of times before, I have a short list of movies I treat myself to watching only once per year, though I realized I hadn’t revisited my favorite Wes Anderson film in a handful. I was worried, and continue to worry, that one day I’ll grow out of the director’s whimsical style, but folks, that day sure hasn’t come yet.
This story about an aging marine documentarian (played by Bill Murray) subverts the directors jaunty tone and colorful production design with a pretty melancholy ethos. Murray’s titular character is pretty sure his best days are behind him, and can’t really come to terms with what his life has added up to. That existential dread can get pretty deep, but it’s wrapped in a fun adventure movie about the search for a rare shark, and features an cast with too many A-listers to name. After this rewatch it remains on my all-time favs list.
Something to Stream
Blackthorn (Max): Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is without a doubt one of the best movies ever made. This movie begins from the idea of, what if the iconic duo didn’t die during the showdown with the Bolivian army? Now it’s 20 years later, and Butch is trying to return home to America. I can’t stop you from feeling like that’s urinating on the legacy of an all-time great, but what if I told you that it’s Sam Shepard who is playing the elder Butch? That’s a good start!
This movie services the superfans of the original movie, including flashbacks to moments after the first movie ends (with “Game of Thrones” star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Butch) and how Sundance eventually dies. It knows that’s where the real intrigue is, but the primary story follows old man Butch who has been beaten down by the world and lost most of his signature charm. He finds himself on the run from the law one final time, and though it’s a slowly-paced movie (so is the original), it does rise to some excellent moments. I’m not sure I would recommend it as a standalone if you’ve never seen the original (and if you haven’t, that’s gotta go to the top of your watch list), but for fans of that one I think this was a pretty natural extension of the beloved classic.
Trailer Watch: Saturday Night
I’m not surprised to see a movie about the beginning of “Saturday Night Live,” the kind of crazy story packed with famous characters that checks the IP prerequisite while maintaining the sheen of a prestige movie. But what really took my expectations to the next level is the conceit here, a very purposeful page out of the Aaron Sorkin playbook: it’s 90 minutes to showtime on the first episode, and all of the stuff is hitting the fan at the same time.
Yes, we’ve seen behind-the-scenes shows like “30 Rock,” and Sorkin’s own “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” but the difference here is a direct portrayal of some of the biggest figures in comedy history. This movie is naming names — Lorne Michaels, Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Gilda Radnor, Dan Aykroyd, Jim Henson — and pairing those icons with a crazy ensemble of young acting talent — Dylan O'Brien, Rachel Sennott, Nicholas Braun, Kaia Gerber, Andrew Barth Feldman, Cooper Hoffman. And that’s not to mention the old heads like J.K. Simmons, Willem Dafoe, Matthew Rhys and LaMorne Morris. Woah. I am impressed. Huge anticipation now from me.