Despite Predictability, Shyamalan’s “Trap” Offers a Few Moments of Enjoyment

After 30 years, it’s easy to have a grudging affection for , even if you’ve never liked them. They tend to be short. Sometimes the twists are clever. He likes slow-burning suspense over violence. He’s a director who , even if it means he sometimes in his eagerness to please.

Trap isn’t Shyamalan’s worst movie; no one would say it’s his best. It’s somewhere in the middle, but it has a goofy charm. plays Cooper, a devoted Philadelphia dad who’s keeping a promise to his daughter, Riley (Ariel Donoghue). As a reward for getting good grades, he’s taking her to see her favorite pop star, the popular Lady Raven (played by pop singer Saleka Shyamalan, the director’s daughter). On the drive to the stadium and as they go inside, Cooper does everything a good dad would do, including buying a concert tee and asking clueless questions about . (Riley tells him what crispy means.) He also learns from a friendly T-shirt seller (played by Jonathan Langdon) that the police are looking for a serial killer known as The Butcher who has a ticket to the concert. The place is surrounded by cops who want to catch him.

That’s all you need to know about the plot of Trap. Shyamalan’s direction is standard here: you can see him trying to make it work, adding a telling shot here, an “Oh no, really?” character reaction there. You can pretty much guess where it’s going, but you might still find some surprises along the way. There are some things that don’t make sense, and a lot of “inside the mind of a criminal” stuff—but then, this is an M. Night Shyamalan movie. Kid Cudi has a cameo as a glamorous superstar known as The Thinker. Saleka Shyamalan, with false eyelashes almost as long as her tall silver boots, is convincing as a pop star who can captivate a huge audience, and maybe not so much as a serial-killer catcher. Still, she tries her best. And Hartnett, a charming actor, makes a great loving, ridiculous dad—though he’s also good at playing a darker side.

Then there’s child star Hayley Mills’ performance, in a small role, as a tough criminal profiler. When I was a kid in 1965, if you told me we’d all have little computers in our pockets, I would have said, OK, that’s possible. A billionaire and TV personality becoming President even though he has no experience? Sure, that could happen. But Hayley Mills from The Parent Trap, The Trouble with Angels, and That Darn Cat! taking pleasure in using electric harpoons to catch a criminal? That I wouldn’t have believed. It might be the best part of Trap, which isn’t saying much. But it’s something.