(Average+) Trap

Movie in one sentence:
Looney murderer lucks his way past half of America's security force.

Movie in more sentences:
A father takes his daughter to a big concert, but notices law enforcement crawling all over the place. When he asks one of the staff members what's going on, he's told they're looking for "The Butcher"; a crazed murderer expected to show up at the concert.

Upon hearing this news, the father tries to find him and his blissfully clueless daughter a way out, but every male attendee is treated like a suspect and no one may casually leave.

Average+, but really, touches the "good" rating for me. I could easily watch this again with family and friends.

I watched this in a period I really wanted to visit the theaters again, but like always, there was little to pick from. I decided to give Trap a try, since the other unknown movie I had my eyes on had an even worse online score.
Having that said, those 1 star reviews really tricked me into believing this was going to be a boring, overly pretentious, badly acted shit show, yet this was the best movie I've seen in too long. This was not a "5 out of 10" experience, I've seen popular blockbusters with 8 or 9 ratings that were way more boring, pretentious, and badly acted. These Trap reviews are undeserved and I can't figure out why this movie's flaws got so hammered on. Is it because it was made by a living meme?

I didn't spoil the story for myself before seeing it and thus was presented a cool early twist. Maybe that made the difference. Since it was written by Shyamalan, I expected an otherworldly, supernatural reveal, like the concert being a cult that planned to brainwash its audience into worshipping some unknown Hellish spirit or whatever, so to see the story was mostly grounded helped keeping my spirits high as well.
Of course, it's fair to criticize the "moments of convenience"; where somehow no one at this busy event notices the criminal (thinking of) tinkering with stuff, or the police that allowed for things the real cops would never, but I was still intrigued by the criminal's quick-thinking. Or luck, really.

The cast was fairly good. The daughter character and concert attendees played the part of awestruck fans well, it requires talent to convincingly appear happy or entranced. I didn't have my eyes on the background at all times, but whenever I did see a minor character's face, I believed I was watching real concert footage.

The role of the singing celebrity was given to Shyamalan's own daughter, and his love for her/the nepotism is palpable, because the song performances in this movie -songs actually written by her- drag on. There were too many instances where I started feeling antsy and just wanted the story to move the fuck on. This is supposed to be a movie, not an actual concert, but Shyamalan truly seemed to struggle at not giving his child her place in the spotlight. Her music isn't worse than what you hear on the radio all the time and I didn't dislike her as an actor, she was given an interesting role to play at the end, but those extra seconds spent on watching everyone sing and dance to her songs should've been given to the scheming criminal.

I really liked seeing him roam around the place, figuring out ways to escape. I thought the actor was good, and maybe not every line fed to him was, but he did his best, in my opinion.
He started off so harmless and goofy, as intended, and as the story progressed, I did not doubt he was a two-faced mental patient.