By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
One of the reasons that the horror genre often feels stale is that bored directors have run out of new ways to surprise us. After all, how scary can something be when you can always guess everything that’s going to happen? If you want some spooky twists from a man you can never fully predict, you’re in luck: M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap is now streaming on Netflix.
Trap On Netflix
Before you stream Trap on Netflix, you should know it has a deliciously simplified plot involving a man taking his daughter to a concert featuring her favorite singer. Unfortunately, the entire event is a massive police operation intended to trap a ruthless serial killer. And since that killer happens to be dear old dad, he spends the rest of the film trying to evade authorities while maintaining the Prince Charming charade that has kept everyone fooled for so long.
Trap has a superior cast to other horror films on Netflix, starting with lead actor Josh Hartnett, (arguably best known for Blackhawk Down and Lucky Number Slevin). It also stars Ariel Donoghue, who is best known for the Blueback and the TV show Wolf Like Me. Rounding out this quirky cast is Alison Pill (best known for Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and Midnight In Paris) and Hayley Mills (best known for Pollyanna and the original The Parent Trap).
Of course, if you’re considering watching Trap on Netflix, it’s likely because you’re already a fan of director M. Night Shyamalan. He is the horror icon behind films such as The Sixth Sense and Signs, and this movie continues his tradition of turning the spooky genre on its ear. For better or for worse, Trap is also a family affair, with Shyamalan’s daughter Saleka Night Shyamalan playing the musical superstar that Hartnett’s own onscreen daughter is obsessed with.
Against a budget of $30 million, Trap earned a box office of $83.6 million long before hitting Netflix. It’s a healthy profit margin, one that showcases why horror is still the most reliable film genre when it comes to ticket sales. With that being said, there are currently no plans for a sequel, though fans of Unbreakable know that Shyamalan isn’t afraid to return to old franchises when fans least expect it.
On Rotten Tomatoes, Trap has a 57 percent critical rating. Critics generally praised the performance by Joshua Hartnett but noted that the film’s tongue-in-cheek tone may be divisive to general audiences. As for general audiences, the movie has a Popcornmeter rating of 65 percent, meaning that casual moviegoers liked this unconventional horror film more than critics did.
Now, I need to address some of the writing that’s on the wall…writing even more obvious than Shyamalan’s cheesy dialogue. The movie might have been a box office hit, but it was a dud with critics and barely made a blip on fans’ radar. Why, then, should you check out Trap, a middle-of-the-road Netflix film from a director who may very well be past his prime?
First of all, it’s worth streaming Trap on Netflix simply for Hartnett’s performance: his amoral character comes across as surprisingly sympathetic, and it’s fun to watch this horror king (seriously, go rewatch how good this man was in The Faculty) return to his genre roots. It’s fair to say that Hartnett elevates the movie’s writing and even helps to paper over some of the rough spots in the script. This helps to cancel out the occasional bits of Shyamalan’s narrative excess, grounding improbable scenarios in Hartnett’s equally improbable charm.
And speaking of Shyamalan, Trap is worth checking out on Netflix for anyone who (like me) has fallen in love with the director’s signature style. He gets mocked for his “what a twist” storytelling format, but what makes Trap notable is that it twists our entire notion of how to tell scary stories. It’s a horror movie rolled into a thriller with just a sprinkling of action movie, and it all adds up to something unlike any other film in any genre
Will you find Trap as novel and charming as I did when you stream it on Netflix, or will this Shymalan film make you wish you were already dead? You won’t know until you stream it for yourself. Just be prepared to utter “I see dead people” again and again before the credits roll on this unpredictable horror film.
