"Trap"

 2024 * PG-13 * 1h 45m M. Night Shyamalan has certainly produced some creepy flicks over the years. Films like "The Sixth Sense," "Signs" and "Lady in the Water" come to mind. "Trap" is his latest, and while viewers and critics love to dump on this movie, I rather enjoyed it. Sure, there are plenty of plot holes, but for this genre, you need to suspend belief in reality and just go with it. I thought is was pretty entertaining. 

The film is about a dad Cooper (Josh Hartnett) who takes his teen-age daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to a Lady Raven concert. She's modeled after Lady Gaga and is played by Shyamalan's daughter Saleka. When Cooper starts acting weird, you know something's up. There's talk about a serial killer in town called "The Butcher" and it turns out the concert is an elaborate trap to nab said killer. Well guess who the killer turns out to be? Yep! Cooper. Somehow he's led a double life where he's a solid family man by day, and a brutal killer at night. 

So the chase is on to try to catch him. He finds out early on what's up when a vender spills the beans about the operation. He's constantly staying one step ahead of the police. I thought overall, it was a very entertaining movie. It was fairly tense and kept me guessing the whole time. About the only complaint is I felt the last third of the movie dragged a bit. With a little bit of editing, they could have gotten it down to an hour and a half and had a better movie. But that's just me. 

3 1/2 out of 5 stars

Currently streaming on Netflix, Hulu and Max. And to rent on Apple TV, Amazon, and other services.