Shyamalan Nights: Trap

Lady Raven's latest concert could be the next Altamont or Woodstock 1999, because Cooper Abbott bought a ticket. People often die around him, because he is a serial killer. Somehow, an FBI profiler figured out he would be at the concert, so she floods the arena with police. However, the killer will be extremely dangerous when cornered, so collateral damage is highly likely in M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap, which screens tomorrow as part of a retrospective of the hot-and-cold director’s work.

While conceived as a Hitchcockian thriller breaking out amidst a Taylor Swift concert, Saleka Shyamalan’s songs are frankly more appealing. She is also surprisingly forceful portraying the fictional mega-popular idol, Lady Raven, in key dramatic scenes. Abbott’s daughter Riley is a huge fan, so he bought floor tickets to celebrate her good grades and apparently as consolation for some bullying she has endured. Seriously, if anyone should be able to [permanently] handle a snobby mean girl, it ought to be Abbott. Maybe later.

Currently, he has Spencer, his latest victim, stashed in one of his lairs. The police are desperate to catch Abbott, so they have taken Lady Raven and the stadium staff into their confidence. Time is running out for poor Spencer and Abbott has some nasty tricks up his sleeve to keep his hunters off-balance.

It turns out working for the fire department is helpful for a serial killer, because you know about all the buildings that have been abandoned after failing fire inspections. That is a rather clever detail from Shyamalan. Abbott’s firefighter profession also adds a further ironic layer. Everyone loves firemen, because they are protectors, but Abbott betrays that public trust, as well as that of his family. (Indeed, Shyamalan shrewdly paired Trap with Hitchcock’s Shadow of Doubt, which also exposes a hidden monster to an unsuspecting family member.)

There is plenty to criticize in other Shyamalan films, but casting his daughter Saleka as Lady Raven should not be reflexively dismissed as nepotism. Her songs certainly fit the setting and she really delivers in the second half, when Lady Raven suddenly becomes personally ensnared in the manhunt drama.

Hartnett is sufficiently creepy as Abbott, but not beyond what we generally expect in these serial killer-next-door characters. However, Hayley Mills (yes, from The Parent Trap) brings a wonderfully steely presence as Dr. Josephine Grant, the profiler. Yet, the biggest surprise comes from Allison Pill, who is really terrific appearing in the third act, as Rachel Abbott.

M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin

Supposedly, groups of four have power, like the Beatles, Seinfeld cast-members, Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and the home invaders of M. Night Shyamalan’s latest film. For the latter, that might not be a coincidence. The creepy foursome is obsessed with Armageddon, but they claim they want to avert doomsday rather than herald it. Their proselytizing techniques could use some work, but their conviction is intense, as a vacationing family learns in Shyamalan’s heavy-handed Knock at the Cabin, which opens today nationwide.

Little Wen was enjoying her cabin holiday with her two dads, Eric and Andrew, until the hulking Leonard showed up. His demeanor is gentle, but in an ominous way. However, his three friends with their Medieval-looking makeshift weapons are obviously bad news, especially the mean-spirited Redmond. They explain they have come to offer the tight-knit family a Sophie’s Choice from Hell, with the fate of humanity depending on their answer.

Supposedly, the four intruders were rather surprised to discover the two men were a gay couple (who pretended to be brothers-in-law while adopting Wen in homophobic China). That must be especially true of Leonard, since he is played by Dave Bautista (who removed a tattoo of Manny Pacquiao tattoo, because of the boxer-turned-politician’s unfortunate comments on same sex couples). However, Andrew, the lawyer and a former victim of an intolerant attack, is not so sure. Regardless, he is extremely skeptical of the trespassers’ crazy apocalyptic talk.

With Cabin, Shyamalan’s forgoes his signature big twists, adopting a “binary” approach. Either it is or it isn’t. Andrew is sure that it isn’t, whereas Eric is maybe starting to entertain their outlandish claims, perhaps partly due to his concussion. There will be no third alternative, arriving out of left field, which makes the ending so disappointing. It just proceeds in an orderly straight line from the original premise, with no deviations.

M. Night Shyamalan’s Split

The term “multiple personality” is out of fashion. Psychiatrists like Dr. Karen Fletcher prefer Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) and they really hate horror films that exploit it. Considering her star patient just kidnapped three teenage girls, she really doesn’t have much grounds to complain. Things had been running pretty smoothly inside the body of the man born Kevin Wendell Crumb as long as Barry controlled each personalities’ access to “the light,” but the bad kids have taken over in M. Night Shyamalan’s Split (trailer here), which opens today in a theater near you.

Dennis would be the compulsively tidy, sociopathic one and Patricia is his sinister compatriot. They were not supposed to come out anymore, but they won over Hedwig, the bratty pre-teen, who has the power to subvert Barry’s authority. Dennis is now calling the shots, but he plans to give way to an apocalyptic twenty-fourth personality.

It is really bad luck that Casey Cook was abducted. Claire Benoit only invited the troubled gothy girl to her birthday celebration out of reluctant obligation. When Dennis snatches her up along with Benoit and her BFF Marcia, Cook better realizes the precariousness of their position. To survive, they will have to win over one of Crumb’s other personalities—perhaps the one that keeps sending late night cry-for-help emails to Dr. Fletcher, who might just be the least intuitive headshrinker in movie history.

Despite her slow uptake, the best passages in Spit feature her verbally probing Dennis pretending to be Barry. There’s definitely some good war-of-wits-and-words stuff going on. On the other hand, the flashbacks explaining Cook’s family issues are predictable and clumsy. The cat-and-mouse game Cook plays with the twenty-three personalities falls somewhere in between. By now, most of us horror fans are weary of watching a psycho holding women victims in his dungeon, but Shyamalan gives the problematic convention a few fresh spins.

Frankly, the days of Shyamalan’s big phony twist tent-pole movies are long gone and good riddance. If he sticks with Blumhouse, he can make a mint and build up a hip cult following by crafting sinister (so to speak) little genre thrillers. In all honesty, the world can use honest exploitation fair far more than the ponderous pretension of The Happening.

James McAvoy is a pretty game as the many faces of Kevin, preening about quite menacingly. Dr. Fletcher’s diagnoses and methods might be questionable, but Betty Buckley is really terrific as the controversial DID expert. Watching her analyze and spar with McAvoy is great fun. On the other hand, up-and-coming stars Anya Taylor-Joy, Haley Lu Richardson, and Jessica Sula are pretty standard horror movie victims and a rather dreary final girl.

Not to be spoilery, but Shyamalan finds an inspired way to tie the events of Split into the universe of his circa 2000 greatest hits. Arguably, he makes the film right there and then. He also takes a Hitchcockian cameo, but it seems like an endearing eccentricity once the excesses of prior films are stripped away. Creepy and grungy (in the right way), Split should keep the Shyamalan comeback train chugging along. Recommended for fans of psycho and psychological thrillers, Split opens in theaters today (1/20), including the AMC Empire in New York.