Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for Trap (2024)

Summary

• Trap's ending lacked the signature Shyamalan twist, leaving viewers wanting more surprise and absurdity.
• Hartnett's performance adds depth to a generic thriller, but fails to deliver the expected Shyamalan twist.
• Compared to Shyamalan's past works, Trap falls short of delivering a memorable and impactful conclusion.

As someone who goes to M. Night Shyamalan movies expecting enjoyable absurdity, I couldn’t help but feel let down when M. Night Shyamalan’s silly but fun twist endings at length, I was still disappointed.

When Trap’s post-credits scene was unsurprising.

Trap's Ending Didn't Live Up To M. Night Shyamalan's Expectations

Trap Doesn’t Feature An Outlandish Twist Like Most Shyamalan Movies

Like a lot of viewers, I don’t come to M. Night Shyamalan movies expecting a perfectly able thriller like Trap. I seek out the director’s works to see twists that don’t quite add up but shock me so much that I find it hard to care. Trap’s ending could have revealed that Hartnett’s Cooper wasn’t really the Butcher and that the FBI had focused on catching the wrong man because the unhinged protagonist merely believed himself to be the killer. The movie could have ended with Jonathan Langdon’s Jamie helping Cooper escape, only to reveal he was an FBI agent.

There are at least a dozen absurd twists that could have elevated Trap’s story.

Lady Raven could have been Cooper’s unlikely accomplice throughout Trap’s entire story, or Cooper’s wife Rachel could have revealed she was working with her husband. There are at least a dozen absurd twists that could have elevated Trap’s story not in a traditional sense, but in the cheerfully absurd way that makes M. Night Shyamalan’s movies unique. Not all of M. Night Shyamalan’s twists work, but all of them make his movies stand out in a crowded marketplace. Trap, in contrast, felt like just another horror thriller that any competent director could have put together.

M. Night Shyamalan's Previous Movies Had Better Endings Than Trap

M. Night Shyamalan Can Typically Be Relied On For A Wild Ending

It is easy to list how Shyamalan’s best movies are stronger than Trap. The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable feature two historically great twist endings, but they also feature two of Bruce Willis’ best mid-career performances and a strong ing cast. It is more instructive to compare Shyamalan’s lesser movies to Trap and see how even their twists could have elevated the thriller. 2015’s found footage horror The Visit is another lone-location horror-adjacent thriller where a family member turns out to be a malign murderer, and its twist is almost laughable and predictable.

However, The Visit worked for me because the movie refused to it just how obvious its twist was. By the time the heroes were spilling stuff on their webcam solely so their mother conveniently couldn’t see their grandparents, it was pretty blatantly clear where the story was heading. Still, this worked far better than Trap refusing to offer any surprise, twist, or subversion of expectations. Similarly, 2016’s Split wasn’t perfect, but its twist linked the movie to the larger universe of Shyamalan’s offerings and proved it was more than a standalone story. In contrast, Trap felt small and inconsequential.

Why Trap's Ending Didn't Work For Me

Trap’s Ending Was Exactly What I Expected From The Movie’s Premise

When I saw the first trailer for Trap, I immediately knew how the movie’s story would go. Trap’s villain protagonist would spend most of the movie trying to escape the concert trap before, eventually, a draggy third act took his chase outside the venue. There wouldn’t be many deaths since that would be too dark, and the story would wrap up with him caught but not dead. Then I saw who was directing Trap, and I was much more excited.

Cooper might have been imagining Jamie altogether, or the FBI might have ended up catching someone else when he misled them.

Although the movie’s rating meant Trap’s lack of character deaths was still an inevitability, I thought anything was possible with Shyamalan at the helm. Maybe Cooper’s daughter would turn out to be his accomplice in killing, or maybe he would succeed in escaping the FBI and kill his family in a daringly downbeat twist. Cooper might have been imagining Jamie altogether, or the FBI might have ended up catching someone else when he misled them. Trap’s director M. Night Shyamalan made me hope for a wild ending, but the biggest surprise ended up being the movie’s predictable conclusion.

Trap is currently playing in theaters.