Trap (2024)
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
Playing with all cards on the table from the first trailer, with a potential and explosive plot twist handed Hitchcock-style to an omniscient audience, Shyamalan constructs and deconstructs a claustrophobic hunt for a serial killer that is both an entertaining game for the viewer and a layered, highly relevant theoretical object. Like its ruthless yet astute protagonist, Trap is a two-faced thriller that challenges our increasingly shaky ability to see, observe, decode, and understand the reality around us.
The (Global) Village
Cooper Adams, a Philadelphia firefighter and esteemed family man, takes his teenage daughter Riley to a concert by pop star Lady Raven as a reward for her good grades in school. After noticing the unusually large police presence at the concert, Cooper learns from the chatty vendor Jamie that the FBI plans to capture a serial killer known as “The Butcher” during the event…
The medium is the message, and the village is increasingly global, but at the same time, almost paradoxically, more closed and claustrophobic. If communication and control are two of the exaggerated and incessant pillars of our contemporary era, and if generational disorientation is another two-faced Janus (but how do these girls talk? What are the collective psychological dynamics of these almost messianic concerts?), one of the keys to understanding Trap lies in the work on the image, on the unstoppable flood of information, including visual data, on the decoding of a reality that should be clear (what else are all these devices for?), but instead proves complicated and damnably deceptive. In this sense, what we have before us is not just a lovable family man capable of hiding a pitch-black side to his disturbed personality, but the personification of 2.0 evil, the updated version of the Monster: no longer a recognizable Michael Myers, but a digitally enhanced Ted Bundy, exceptionally skilled in analyzing the context to manipulate it to his advantage in the blink of an eye. We, all of us, are instead unable to see him, despite the trap, the surveillance cameras, the profiler’s meticulous clues. Because we are, after all, like his children or the chubby, friendly T-shirt vendor, blinded by the surface, by the illusion—while Cooper feeds on truth, able to read it, to distinguish between the appearance of The Thinker and the substance of Lady Raven.
In reversing the Hitchcockian point of view, reminding us of the theoretical maneuvers of the English genius, but also crafting a mise-en-scène with De Palma-esque contours (see the use of depth of field for compositions reminiscent of split-screen effects), Shyamalan continues along a poetic trajectory traced over decades: once again, in a confined space, genre cinema becomes a tool for investigating our society, anchored in our present, asking us to look beyond, to reflect, to piece together what we have seen (and, hopefully, observed). However, compared to the cereal boxes in Lady in the Water (2006), the message beyond life in Signs (2002), or the benevolent deception in The Village (2004), the signs we should be observing have multiplied while simultaneously becoming blurred or tremendously hybridized. For example, isn’t Cooper a decidedly better father than the obsessive mother of the mischievous Jody? And isn’t Riley an adorable girl who mirrors her heroic dad? And isn’t it a model parent gesture to put away, as a sort of final farewell, the beloved daughter’s bicycle? Especially because, after all, the trap originates from a classic good dad gesture, from a perfect all-American parent. And not just any parent, but a firefighter, a (super)heroic icon of post-9/11 United States.
Within this sort of inverted and armored replica of The Village, the Beast has camouflaged itself (no longer as tormented and recognizable as Kevin Wendell Crumb from Split and Glass), the Monster, no longer dressed as an improbable Boogeyman. Instead, it is disguised as a family man, a very cordial neighbor, a firefighter. This camouflage is, moreover, the most claustrophobic of the traps scattered throughout Trap: the concert, Spencer’s basement, the Adams house bathroom, the limousine, the police van, the surveillance camera footage…
In a society that strives for social uniformity, complete with a new Warholian twist on fleeting fame and self-assertion (as a copy), The Butcher is the indelible incarnation of Evil, that dark and terrible component that our nature (and therefore society) has always harbored—and, indeed, will always harbor. Simulating real-time, as if we were in the realm of Snake Eyes, Shyamalan embeds all of today’s contradictions into this narrative mechanism, carving out for Saleka\Lady Raven an almost messianic role (just like the slimy The Thinker), and for Instagram an almost salvific utility. A perfect coexistence and interpenetration of Good and Evil. The importance of appearance becomes, in this case, a matter of life or death (which, coincidentally, is the title of Hayley Mills’ first film, a child actress not so dissimilar from Riley\Ariel Donoghue).
Like much of Shyamalan’s filmography, Trap is a family matter, in this case, even on the creative and production level. In and around Philadelphia, both on and off the screen, Shyamalan’s poetic vision has multiplied, becoming a factory. And if the female component plays a significant role in the realization, on screen it becomes a bearer of hope and salvation: a generational chain, from the very young Riley to the elderly profiler, that manages to stand up to Cooper, the male, The Butcher. Empathy as a shield to confront and neutralize the new Norman Bates. At least for a while.
Enrico Azzano
Quinlan, August 11, 2024
