25 years after 1999’s Sixth Sense vaulted him to “A-list” status, M. Night Shyamalan continues to crank out movies. For his latest thriller, we go to 2024’s Trap.

Philadelphia firefighter Cooper Abbott (Josh Hartnett) takes his 12-year-old daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to a big arena concert staged by pop superstar Lady Raven (Saleka Night Shyamalan). When there, Cooper notices a massive police presence and eventually learns law enforcement uses this event to catch “The Butcher”, a local serial killer authorities learned would attend the show.

As it happens, Cooper is The Butcher. He attempts to use all his wiles to escape this seemingly impenetrable snare.

After Sixth Sense, Shyamalan managed two more very good movies: 2000’s Unbreakable and 2002’s Signs. After that, the wheels fell off the proverbial bus.

This means Shyamalan’s filmography over the last 20 years gives us a spotty collection of releases. While he occasionally musters a pretty good flick, an awful lot of his work seems iffy or worse.

Into the “worse” bucket falls the ridiculous Trap. Badly flawed from start to finish, the movie inspires more eye-rolls than thrills.

Like many Shyamalan flicks, Trap feels like a concept around which the director then attempted to cobble a credible story. And to be fair, the basic conceit of Trap seems kind of cool, as the massive scale of its cat and mouse theme offers potential intrigue.

However, the concept fails to hold up to even the most basic scrutiny. Trap requires such massive suspension of disbelief that it becomes idiotic.

To escape the arena, Cooper needs so many coincidences and convenient events that it boggles the mind. Most of these make nary a lick of sense and just turn the movie into an array of allegedly tense scenes that feel laughable instead.

Heck, Shyamalan can’t even get the concert experience right. As one who’s attended hundreds of arena shows – including plenty by artists in the “Lady Raven” vein – I can tell that nothing about this side of the movie rings true.

Lady Raven puts on a shockingly basic performance for an “A-list” star, and the crowd seems soddly disinterested in the event much of the time. Venue concourses remain packed the whole show, whereas in reality, they’re ghost towns during the artist’s time on stage.

Even if I ignore this utter lack of verisimilitude, Trap loses more points due to some weak performances. Hartnett portrays Cooper in a strangely camp and comedic manner that robs any menace from the character.

Director’s daughter Saleka falters as our pop star, too. She seems unconvincing as an Ariana Grande type, and her dramatic chops fare even worse.

Is it unfair to view Saleka as a nepotism hire? No, as she shows too little talent for me to believe she’d have gotten a job without her dad in charge.

To add insult to injury, Trap feels like it’ll never end. 105 minutes doesn’t sound like an extended running time, but Shyamalan fails to pad out that span well and much of the flick’s second half comes across like padding.

And it is, as Shyamalan came up with a concept for a movie and figured that theme would be enough. It’s not, so we wind up with a consistently terrible attempt at a serial killer thriller.

Trap appears in an aspect ratio of approximately 1.85:1 on this 4K UHD Disc. A native 4K production, the Dolby Vision image worked well.

Overall sharpness worked fine. Despite a little softness in some wider shots, the majority of the movie brought appealing accuracy.

No issues with jagged edges or moiré effects arose, and I saw no edge haloes. Print flaws also remained absent.

The film’s palette leaned toward a mix of blue/teal and amber/orange. These looked fine within the movie’s design choices, and the disc’s HDR added a bit of punch to the tones.

Blacks felt deep and dark, while shadows appeared clear. HDR gave whites and contrast a little extra kick. This was a positive reproduction of the source.

Downconverted to Dolby TrueHD 7.1, the movie’s Dolby Atmos soundtrack seemed perfectly competent, if not especially impressive. Given the story’s parameters, it simply lacked a lot of room for sonic impact.

At the concert, the mix usually concentrated on “arena ambience” and music, with only minor effects presence. Once the story moved on from the show, more action arrived, and those moments used the various channels reasonably well. Nonetheless, the soundfield didn’t come with a ton of ambition.

Audio quality satisfied, with speech that felt natural and concise. Music displayed positive range and vivacity.

Effects showed good accuracy and clarity, without distortion or issues. While without sonic fireworks, the mix nonetheless suited the narrative.

As we shift to extras, Setting the Trap runs four minutes, eight seconds. It gives us notes from writer/director M. Night Shyamalan and actors Josh Hartnett, Saleka Night Shyamalan, Hayley Mills, and Alison Pill.

“Setting” examines the movie’s concept, story/characters, cast and performances, and the filmmaker’s use of storyboarding. A few decent notes emerge but the program seems too short to convey much.

Saleka as Lady Raven goes for five minutes, eight seconds. It provides info from M. Night Shyamalan, Saleka Night Shyamalan, and Hartnett.

As implied by the title, the program covers Saleka’s character and related aspects. It mixes fluff and insights.

Three Deleted Scenes occupy a total of six minutes, 16 seconds. We find “Cooper Gets Stopped by SWAT” (0:53), “Riley Shows Lady Raven Her Room” (1:41) and “Cooper Takes a Hostage and Slips Away” (3:42).

All of these come from the movie’s second half and they do nothing more than elongate a film that already runs too long. They made for appropriate deletions.

Finally, we locate an Extended Concert Scene (3:29) that offers a longer version of “Where Did She Go”. Despite that title, this doesn’t actually take place at Lady Raven’s arena show.

More information would act as a spoiler, so I’ll say no more. The segment simply provides more of the song and doesn’t seem like anything that benefits the film.

A concept ineptly fleshed out into a feature film, Trap turns into a ridiculous stab at a thriller. Absurd in so many ways, the movie prompts more unintentional comedy than tension. The 4K UHD comes with solid picture and audio but supplements seem insubstantial. Maybe someday M. Night Shyamalan will return to form, but Trap becomes one of his weaker efforts.