Key Takeaways
- Cooper’s character in Trap is a cliché horror movie villain with a typical backstory, lacking depth.
- Giving away the twist in the trailer was a mistake, disappointing horror fans with an unsatisfying ending.
- In Trap, the lack of a compelling narrative and unrealistic events make it less engaging than other modern slasher movies.
M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense not only delivered one of the most epic twists in the horror genre’s history, but it was one of the first movies that I remember that truly scared me as a kid. As someone who grew up in the 1990s and watched several movies starring Josh Hartnett, from The Faculty to Here on Earth, I was excited to watch one of his most recent releases. Harnett stars in Trap as Cooper Abbott, a dad who accompanies his teenage daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to Lady Raven’s (Saleka Shyamalan) concert. The potential twist is shared in the trailer: is Cooper the serial killer named The Butcher who everyone at the concert is searching for?
The concert setting was a unique idea for a horror movie and I looked forward to Harnett’s performance. However, I think the ending of Trap was disappointing, and so was Cooper’s character. I don’t think he’s a well-crafted villain.
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Why I Think Trap’s Villain Cooper Is Lackluster
I think Cooper is a dull horror movie villain because he’s exactly the kind of killer that horror fans have seen countless times before. By Trap‘s third act, audiences find out that Cooper’s mother mistreated him. These bad memories still haunt him, which is why he kept seeing her at the concert. While this is of course tragic to hear about, that’s a typical explanation for why someone would become a serial killer. I would have liked to learn more about Cooper’s background and current life. Sure, he’s a father of two kids, a wife to Rachel (Allison Pill), and a firefighter, but what else is going on with him?
Instead of being an original horror movie villain, Cooper feels like everyone else. In real life, when someone commits a crime, neighbors tell reporters that they “seemed so nice” and “were just a regular person.” It feels like neighbors would say that about Cooper, but that doesn’t tell me enough about who he is.
I also think that giving away the twist in the trailer for Trap was a bad idea. The marketing for The Black Phone was great, but the same thing can’t be said here. I went into the movie wondering if the real twist was that Cooper wasn’t The Butcher at all and someone else was hiding in the shadows all along. When that didn’t turn out to be the case, I hoped for a better ending than Cooper escaping from the police and clearly going to continue his killing spree. While it was a surprise that Rachel knew about Cooper’s secret identity all along, this wasn’t a big enough reveal to satisfy me, and I suspect other horror fans felt the same way.
I would also argue that Cooper does a poor job trying to escape from the concert venue and not get caught. His success rests on other characters not doing their jobs properly. Everyone, from the security guards to Dr. Josephine Grant (Hayley Mills), a profiler who works for the FBI, seems to have no idea how to find The Butcher. This is unrealistic and wouldn’t actually happen, making Trap much less compelling than other modern slasher movies. It never feels like Cooper has a master plan or is one step ahead of the authorities, even though the movie acts like he is.
What Did Horror Fans Think About M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap?
Horror fans didn’t enjoy Trap, either, and many shared their thoughts in a Reddit thread. One Redditor agreed that the movie didn’t work because there should have been a second twist that there was another character who is The Butcher. The fan wrote:
“I kept expecting the Shyamalan twist to be that Cooper wasn’t the serial killer they were after.”
Redditor @BaronVonRuthless91 agreed that it didn’t make sense that the FBI spent so much time working with Lady Raven to take Cooper down. They wrote:
“Was anyone else a bit distracted by how the FBI decided to let a random celebrity in on all their plans?”
Any of these criticisms might be less upsetting if Cooper was a more memorable and well-crafted villain. But since he’s not very exciting to watch, it makes the holes in the plot of Trap seem more obvious.
Redditor @DRoseCantStop noted that Trap gets less interesting when the setting changes from the concert to Cooper’s neighborhood. Although the concert scenes might not be perfect, at least it’s a different environment for a slasher story to take place in. The fan wrote:
“I would’ve been more impressed had they stayed at the concert until the last act. Film definitely lost some steam after the escape to suburbia, IMO.”
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