Jeez, where to start? Like most people, I found the early works of M. Night Shayamalan to be original, delightfully innovative and supernaturally twisty. Like The Sixth Sense and Signs. The sad truth is that he apparently debuted at the peak of his powers, and it’s been pretty much downhill from there. Like The Last Airbender and After Earth. 

And now we have this. I’d declare a spoiler alert if I weren’t so sure that after reading this you’ll give it a pass. The spoiler is actually the whole point of the story, and the Big Reveal comes early in the first act. Whatever. 

Here it is: A serial killer dubbed “The Butcher” (a cringy Josh Hartnett) whose cover is a wholesome family man takes his teenage daughter to a pop diva concert (M. Night’s daughter Saleka, whose fake eyelashes make her look like she’s being attacked by face-eating spiders). He figures he’ll be unidentifiable among the screaming crowds. 

But soon he becomes aware of a huge police presence and hears that they have received a tip and are questioning all middle-aged males leaving the arena (this is not even legal). OMG!  It’s a trap! There ensues a cat-and-mouse game as he tries to find a way out without blowing his carefully constructed, good-guy cover. 

I was gratified to see Hartnett in Oppenheimer, emerging from obscurity after an early stint as a teen matinee idol. But he’s going to have to aim a bit higher than this pseudo-suspense drivel if he wants to achieve a comeback. 

This is a really bad movie (and I don’t mean so-bad-it’s-good), maybe the director’s worst. Full of plot holes, laughable red herrings, bad acting, crappy sets and seems way too long at only an hour and three-quarters. It runs out of plot in the third act, as M. Night’s films tend to do, but just keeps on going, and there isn’t even that famed M. Night twist. A big No Fun. 

Soon you realize that the only one in a trap here is you in the audience, which you deserve for believing the trailers and ignoring my advice. You’ll also wake up to the fact that the real reason for this nothingburger’s existence is M. Night’s trying to buy his charmless and talentless daughter Saleka a career as a pop singer/songwriter/actress (she wrote and performs all the criminally bland songs). This would take a kind of magic he never had, even at his start. (105 min)