In his latest movie, one of America’s premier directors of the strange, M. Night Shyamalan, tells the story of a dad taking his teenage daughter to a pop concert. This man has many of the appealing quirks of the Good Father—he cracks dad jokes, tries to learn teenage lingo, and even endures a concert mainly attended by teen girls for the sake of his kid. Only there’s one difference: He’s also a serial killer nicknamed The Butcher.

Played by Josh Hartnett, the psychopath dad is good-looking, affable, and grounded. Even as the audience learns that he is evil, the camera remains largely focused on his point of view. In other words, we are meant to sympathize with his plight. We sit on the edge of our seats as he discovers that the concert itself is a trap (hence the name of the movie: "Trap") to catch him. The authorities believe that The Butcher is attending the concert.

While this is not Shyamalan’s best film, this movie does a good job of getting the audience to, if not root for a villain, to at least hope that he........

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