#Saleka Night Shyamalan

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TRAP (2024)

Director: M. Night Shyamalan Cinematography: Sayombhu Mukdeeprom

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Longlegs (2024):

Starts with a T Rex lyric

Plays three T Rex songs

Features Nic Cage singing a T Rex song

Has a T Rex poster on the wall in two scenes

Trap:

(2024)

I know you’ve seen Trap now so I hope your opinions have changed but let’s compare:

Longlegs:

All that stuff about T Rex

Good performance from the main actress

??? uhhhhhhh

Trap:

Features an album’s worth of original music from the ICON that is Saleka (AKA Lady Raven)

Features a hot serial killing dilf as the protagonist (and he’s actually a really good dad so points there!)

Features not one but THREE (3) fake popstars, one of which is played by Kid Cudi in a fuckass blonde wig

Speaking of the Kid Cudi character, he is also gay as hell, drops maybe the most (intentionally) funny line of the whole movie while bitching to his assistant about his drink order, and shamelessly thirsts over hot serial killer daddy literally one second later

Reads like a fanfic I would’ve written at age 13 in terms of absolute insanity (HUGE compliment)

No two characters have a normal interaction for the entire runtime to the point where the whole thing feels like some kind of parallel reality that’s just slightly off (another huge compliment)

Features Jamie, the only merch seller who’s ever been happy at work <3

I could go on

[scenesandscreens]

TRAP (2024)

Director - M. Night Shyamalan, Cinematography - Sayombhu Mukdeeprom

"I think you're looking for me."

[nc3rdeye]

Saleka - Where Did She Go (Original Music From The Motion Picture TRAP) ...

Saleka Night Shyamalan

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/26/2024: THE DAY OF BAD DECISIONS feat. TRAP and SPEAK NO EVIL (2024)

I know I've said some version of this in several entries, but I'm trying to stop picking movies that I know won't give me anything nice to say, and I really let myself down this year. I had a lot on my plate, personally, and I didn't want to be this careless but OH WELL. Out of some fucked up sense of inevitability, I caved in and watched TRAP, which was somehow a worse experience than whatever I expected.

The titular "trap" is this improbable thing where a serial killer called "The Butcher"--the laziest serial killer name ever and also one that is not at all earned in the movie--is supposed to be captured at a gigantic arena filled with thousands and thousands of tween concert-goers, which is pretty stupid. The Butcher aka Cooper (Josh Hartnett) is a goofy suburban dad who takes his goofy daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to see Lady Raven, aka M. Night Shyamalan's daughter Saleka, about whom more presently. You might think you're going to get something like SNAKE EYES where the environment of a championship boxing match is fully exploited to create some complex scenarios--the unique structure of the building, its surveillance technology, its communication systems, all the potential collateral damage, etc--but nothing that clever is afoot here. Cooper and Riley spend quite a lot of time enjoying the concert and palling around with the staff and the singer, before they all move on to Cooper's home where he and Lady Raven engage in a battle of wits because she has been elevated to the status of detective for some reason. I swear to god there's a moment where she's taunting Cooper by describing the whole Butcher situation to his wife Rachel (Alison Pill), and Rachel says, "Did you catch him?" Which is hilariously absurd, and also sort of the main problem with this entire movie: the gross overreaction to Lady Raven.

I knew that M. Night Shyamalan had mounted this movie as a vehicle for his daughter, and I know she's a real professional recording artist and everything, but the two of them were just not equipped to make a movie that convincingly simulates the excitement of an arena show by someone with the star power of Taylor Swift. (His explicit point of reference was that this should be like the Eras Tour) That's a tall order, and the concert never rises above the atmosphere of like, a large community center show for local talents. The music is anonymous, the costumes are bad, everyone is being pretty well-behaved, and it feels like it's just a lot of little kids. Actually I almost felt sorry for this movie because SMILE 2 does such a stellar job of creating a convincing pop star--something that is almost always a bad idea--complete with realistic top 40 songs and successfully Gaga-like stage shows. I mean it really works, it's sort of miraculous...and then TRAP comes out at the same time, with an actual pop singer in it, and it manages to completely undermine whatever real-world charisma and ability she might have. If I didn't know she was a real performer, I wouldn't have bought it.

I think that to get the message of this movie, you have to really attach yourself to needy tween Riley's point of view, which is a tall order in and of itself. It's not enough to just say "Saleka Night Shyamalan is really cool and pretty and a good singer, right? She should be a big star, right?" You have to like, empathize with the point of view that Saleka is the BEST pop star, and empathize with how awesome it would be if she picked YOU to dance on the stage with her, and empathize with the fantasy that her whole entourage are really nice and cool and they like you, and empathize with the thrill of Saleka coming to your house and hanging out with your lame boring family and saying things like "I don't know why but I feel so connected to you!" Like this is just a lot to ask of the viewer--you're not just asking me to agree that Saleka should be a famous singer in real life, you're asking me to have this whole fantasy about what if Saleka were already my idol AND I find out that she's an awesome person in real life who wants to be my bff AND she's a super radical girl detective who fights my jerky daddy! This movie just expects a humongous buy-in from me right off the bat without giving me much in exchange, and honestly I felt sort of offended.

Mercifully I'm a little too far away from my screening to fully account for all of the things about TRAP that were stupid and dull and infantile and didn't make any sense. M. Night Shyamalan is complicated to deal with. He has his defenders, and I think their position is that he makes these breezy, fun, blockbuster-y things that are just supposed to be pure entertainment--and honestly I always tell myself, "Well, this will be dumb fun, at the very least"...but then it isn't. Then it's actually frustrating, and pretentious, and babyish, and I just wind up feeling really exasperated. I'm capable of finding THE HAPPENING entertaining because it's just so relentlessly silly, and I can sort of remember how it felt when THE SIXTH SENSE was new, but practically all of his movies become insulting at some point, and that is not an enjoyable sensation.

That movie took me up to about 11:50pm on 10/26, and I thought maybe I could rescue the day's entry by starting something else under the wire, and I picked the exact wrong movie. Blumhouse remade the 2022 Danish movie SPEAK NO EVIL and I don't know why. I guess they just couldn't think of anything else to do. I always remember when Jason Blum was on The Last Drive-In and he described himself as basically just a salesman who knew nothing about horror movies, but he noticed that horror was selling and figured he could sell that too, and so he produced PARANORMAL ACTIVITY and the rest is history. That made so much sense to me, that Blumhouse is the brainchild of a salesman from outside the film world, who knows a hot product when he sees one. But anyway SPEAK NO EVIL seems really unmotivated to me. When the trailer came out and it showed every single major plot point in order from beginning to end, I was sort of stunned. I almost wondered if that meant they had added something new to the story, so there could be some surprises still in store, but there really isn't.

To my mind, the only real virtue of the first movie is how shocking it is. I mean, it's OK, it's fine, it just doesn't seem to have a real point to make. It participates in that trope where it's like, bestial rednecks torment city slickers who are too polite to react with the appropriate violence, which means they're a bunch of castrated hypocrites. When STRAW DOGS does it, it's about dysfunctions of masculinity and how you need to maintain your primal animalistic instincts if you're going to survive. FUNNY GAMES does it in the service of criticizing the commodification of the spectacle of violence. THE VAGRANT does it to be hilarious. There are a whole slew of movies that deal with this, not always in very inspired ways, and I'm not sure what SPEAK NO EVIL wants other than to be unusually graphic about child abuse and generally be a gigantic bummer. Which is fine, you can do that. But then why remake it? Blumhouse didn't do an exceptional job, the drama is unconvincing and they backed off of the extreme darkness achieved by the original. Maybe it's ironic; I've been promising myself that I'll be less bitchy about movies on the internet, and then SPEAK NO EVIL just has so little to say that I don't have much to say either!

[moviehealthcommunity]

Trap (2024)

This is a Movie Health Community evaluation. It is intended to inform people of potential health hazards in movies and does not reflect the quality of the film itself. The information presented here has not been reviewed by any medical professionals.

Trap has scenes of police car strobe lights during a large portion of the third act of the film. There is some strobe lighting that illuminates a concert audience briefly. During one number at this concert, a digital background shows some clouds filled with lightning.

There is some infrequent use of handheld and shaking camera work.

Flashing Lights: 7/10. Motion Sickness: 4/10.

TRIGGER WARNING: This film explores the psychology of a serial killer. There is some kidnapping, and there are some graphic descriptions of horrific acts of violence. One person briefly muses about a potential murder-suicide plan.

Video ID: Admin Brandon's review and evaluation of Trap

[genevieveetguy]

Trap, M. Night Shyamalan (2024)

[moviemosaics]

Trap

directed by M. Night Shyamalan, 2024

[rickchung]

Trap (dir. M. Night Shyamalan).

Shyamalan simply cannot resist or help himself from over-explaining everything. After mining an irresistibly clever premise about setting a titular trap at a pop concert to catch a serial killer hiding in plain sight and following his desperate attempt to evade capture, how Trap unfolds after the first half follows a series of preposterous situations. Afterwards, things just escalate to artifically extend the contained psychological thriller's unpredictable but needlessly wild plot. Much of the film is self-awarely constructed, but there's no solid direction other than Josh Hartnett's excellently performed evil dad character (dubbed "The Butcher") on the loose who takes increasingly higher risks to maintain a tight control. It loses stream after a promising setup as he must constantly outsmart and outmaneuver the cops zeroing in on him.

[bkenber]

'Trap' Movie and 4K Review

The following review was written by Ultimate Rabbit correspondent, Tony Farinella. It’s interesting how timing can work when watching movies, as I recently checked out “The Sixth Sense” on 4K with it being its 25th anniversary.  “The Sixth Sense” is one of my favorite films from M. Night Shyamalan along with “Unbreakable.” These two are great reminders of what he can do when he’s in the right…

[gbhbl]

Horror Movie Review: Trap (2024)

A father and teen daughter attend a pop concert, where they realize they're at the center of a dark and sinister event.

Trap is a 2024 American psychological thriller film written, directed, and produced by M. Night Shyamalan. Philadelphia firefighter Cooper Adams takes his teenage daughter, Riley, to pop star Lady Raven’s concert as a reward for her good grades. There, Cooper notices the unusually high police presence around the concert venue. He learns from a vendor named Jamie that the FBI plans to catch a…

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Podcast: Out Come The Wolves & Trap

This week on the show, join us for a breakdown of the new Canadian survival horror film Out Come The Wolves, starring Missy Peregrym in her second collaboration with Backcountry director Adam MacDonald. Then, we’ll look at the newest film by five-star three-star director M. Night Shyamalan, Trap, which features a tour-de-force performance from Josh Hartnett.   Join us! Continue reading Podcast:…

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Κριτική ταινίας : Trap (Παγίδα)

Κριτική ταινίας : Trap (Παγίδα) του M. Night Shyamalan Με τους Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue, Saleka Night Shyamalan, Hayley Mills και Alison Pill

Το Trap (Παγίδα) του M. Night Shyamalan ένα συναρπαστικό μείγμα σασπένς και οπτικής φινέτσας, αλλά αποτυγχάνει με μια υπερβολικά πολύπλοκη πλοκή και έναν ασυνεπή ρυθμό που το εμποδίζουν να αξιοποιήσει πλήρως τις δυνατότητές του. Ένας πατέρας και η έφηβη κόρ�� του πηγαίνουν σε μία ποπ συναυλία, όπου συνειδητοποιούν ότι βρίσκονται στο επίκεντρο ενός νοσηρού ιστού. M. Η τελευταία ταινία του Night…

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La Trampa…Tu Amor Es Una Trampa Maldita

No se si ya he dejado claro que en este sitio somos “fanseses” del director M. Night Shyamalan, si no lo volvemos a dejar claro… No encantan sus películas (risas). Y para sorpresa de muchos La Trampa llegó como la noche, ósea se dejó caer humildemente sin saber que esperar… Afortunadamente nos sorprendió y superó expectativas. Continue reading La Trampa…Tu Amor Es Una Trampa Maldita

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Saleka & Amaarae - Pieces (Original Music From The Motion Picture TRAP) ...

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Eavesdropping at the Movies

After a long time off, we return with M. Night Shyalaman’s new thriller, Trap, in which Josh Hartnett’s doting dad, Cooper, takes his daughter to see her favourite pop star at a massive arena gig, but finds himself surrounded and hunted by the FBI. We discuss the ways in which Shyamalan gives Cooper opportunities for escape but closes them off; the unusually disappointing lack of imagination and…