If a new M. Night Shyamalan film is coming to theaters, it’s only natural that you’d want to share some spoilers. trapStarring Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donahue and Saleka Shyamalan.
However trap There are many plot twists in this movie, but none of them are as shocking as Shyamalan’s. Or are there? For us, the biggest reveal in the movie isn’t when Cooper (Hartnett) and Riley (Donahue) run away from the concert in Lady Raven’s (Shyamalan) limousine. It’s not even everything that happens after they return to her house. It’s the moment Cooper runs away again, comes back, and finds out that it was his wife (Alison Pill) who left the receipt for the Lady Raven tickets in one of their hideouts. Despite everything she said a few scenes earlier, she actually had a hunch that her husband was the Butcher, and was trying to get the police to help her find out for sure.
But is this a Shyamalan twist? It’s certainly an unexpected and satisfying turn of events, turning a fun cat-and-mouse thriller on its head and sending out a strong message about female intuition. It also, in a way, turns the movie on its head as we learn that it’s Riley’s mother, and Cooper’s wife, who are indirectly responsible for everything that happens in the movie. And let’s not forget that the fact that the pill is in the movie was withheld in the trailers, as it would have revealed that the others are leaving the concert. So, all things considered, maybe it’s a Shyamalan twist, but to a lesser extent. Either way, it’s a fun and unexpected reveal.
And at the end of the film, Cooper is captured, he holds his son, and he gets into an armored car. And then we see that he steals a spoke from his son’s bike, and we know that he’ll try to escape again someday. It’s an interesting, open-ended story to keep us going until the end, but I’m not sure if it worked. The whole film was a tightrope walk for the audience. Do we want to see him get captured, or do we want to see him escape? And in the end, you’d hope that Shyamalan takes a side. Instead, by letting it continue and leaving us to interpret whether he’ll escape again, the film loses some of its potential impact. I didn’t like that scene.
But I was a big fan of the mid-credits scene in the movie. It goes back to the dealer (Jonathan Langdon) who first told Cooper about the trap. He also gave Cooper the secret code word, had his badge stolen, and basically ruined everything. He’s watching TV and hears that The Butcher has been caught, and we see him realize that Cooper is The Butcher and that he helped The Butcher escape. He’s shocked.
The moment is secondary to the story, but it’s great and makes a statement at the end. And it wasn’t even part of Shyamalan’s original plan. “It wasn’t in the script,” he told io9. “I was like, ‘Whoa, you know what? I’m just going to shoot it.’ And I was like, ‘Let’s just start shooting and get ready. Whenever I have an hour or two free, I’ll shoot it, let’s do it.'”
Those are our thoughts on the last big thread. trap. what about you?
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