Control Review: Trap
I, Dalton Lewis, watched Trap.
How did that happen?
I was sitting there, at dinner, a mentally-ill middle-aged man with his parents. I talked to the voices inside of my head during the dinner because that’s what I do: I talk to the voices regularly, telling out a story with them.
I decided to invite my dad to a movie.
“Dad, was there a movie you wanted to see?” I asked.
“Trap,” he said.
“Trap it is,” I said.
“Don’t be out too late,” Mom said. “He goes to Kalamazoo to watch tennis tomorrow starting at six in the morning. He can’t be out too late.”
“I will get the tickets right now,” I said. I bought us tickets on my Chromebook to Trap at the movie theater.
Then we got Dad into the car and remembered to put the wheelchair in the trunk. My Dad still has Parkinson’s. There is no cure. There is no solution. He is wasting away due to illness. He needs the wheelchair outside of the house. Inside of the house he has the walkers.
We drove — I drove us — to the movie theater.
I got the wheelchair out of the trunk and opened his car door. He struggled but managed to stand up and transfer from the car to the wheelchair.
We walked into the theater.
I loaded up the tickets.
Loading…
Loading…
Nothing. They didn’t load. We spend good money on these tickets.
I looked up my email to load up the tickets from my email.
Score.
My tickets loaded.
“Auditorium one,” the ticket taker said.
We walked into auditorium one. I then got to the concession stand to order a medium popcorn and two sodas. Usually it’s a Diet Mountain Dew night but tonight was a Diet Dr. Pepper night. Dad had a Diet Pepsi. We sat down to watch the film.
It was a good film.
In it a twelve-year-old girl goes to a concert in which the singer is her favorite pop star, a lady named Lady Raven. This is obviously someone inspired by Taylor Swift. Teenage girls love Taylor Swift. They love going to concerts with their favorite pop stars who talk about their relationships and their families and their emotions and love to write songs about them and perform them for lots and lots of fame and money.
Her dad takes her to the concert. He gets a t-shirt from a concession stand salesperson who tells him that the concert is a trap to catch a notorious serial killer who is supposed to be at the concert that night.
Our protagonist, as revealed in the trailer, seems to be the killer. On the other hand, this is a movie by a certain famous director known for twists, so no one can be proven innocent or guilty until the very end of the movie. This one kept me guessing more than something like Bad Boys did.
The concert venue is well-thought-out and a great setting for a thriller which is a cat-and-mouse game between the authorities and someone who is trying to avoid being caught.
The setting is well-utilized. The characters buy pretzels. They buy t-shirts. They wander around in the back area chatting with other girls’ parents. Security is crazy tight — there are cops and security guards everywhere, questioning everyone. People use their phones all throughout the concert — watching the concert and turning on their lights on cue and so on.
It’s interesting to me in these things if you should root for the protagonist or not. He’s clearly doing something wrong — but you find yourself rooting for him as he tries to get away with this nonsense of killing people. I don’t know why the psychology twists that way, but it does — I found myself rooting for someone who seemed to be a serial killer. That is an interesting premise for a movie, a sympathetic serial killer who loves his daughter.
Lady Raven, the pop star, has to make some interesting choices. She has to advocate for her fans and do everything possible to protect her fans, but she also has to balance that against the demands of a serial killer who may have a wonderful daughter who loves him. Lady Raven’s arc — she shows up in the movie — is an effective way of showing the reality behind the lens of celebrity.
The profiler, meanwhile, is there to spout nonsense about the killer and how unstoppable he is — fodder for the trailer and so on. I didn’t understand where that angle was going.
The daughter-father relationship made me like both characters. They were smart and clever and had intelligent repartee. The daughter, Riley, seemed to be a well-written character who had interests and problems of her own — and had concern for a dad who clearly had issues.
Overall — the movie delivered on the premise of a thriller set at a musical concert. The audience saw behind the curtain to the singer of the concert and saw the magnificence of a big-time concert experience.
If you really want to watch a clever PG-13 thriller?
This one’s for you.
My dad and I went home. I pushed the wheelchair back to the car and drove him home. I was glad that he made me get back into driving. The voices didn’t seem to bother me as much that evening for some reason. Life went on.
Thanks, and take care, friends.
