Caught this on MAX and was interested because I have heard from different people that it was either good, bad or bad in an interesting way so I was very curious.
I have seen it and I can attest it is just bad. Slow with awkward dialogue and acting and plot holes you can drive three trucks through. Just not a good time. Anyone else see it?
Trailer:
I’d be the first to agree that “awkward dialogue and acting and plot holes you can drive three trucks through” could be the definitive dictionary definition for “M. Night Shyamalan movie”, but I gotta admit, the trailer looked pretty good. I wouldn’t go out of my way to see it in the theater, but since it’s on Max, I’ll likely watch it.
Spoiler warning for the trailer though: it looks like it spoils a pretty significant mid-movie twist, so be forewarned. I’ll summarize the trailer without adding the twist: a father takes his tween daughter to a pop music show. During the show, while on a bathroom break, he notices a significant police presence and asks a vendor about it. He learns that there’s intel that a notorious serial killer is in the arena, and they’re setting up a trap for him.
I originally thought the same thing when I first saw the film over the summer, but that’s actually not a twist, as it’s revealed during the first like 5-10 mins of the film.
Ah, so that reveal happens almost as soon in the movie as it does in the trailer, eh?
Still, I would have preferred to watch the movie without that bit of knowledge, as it is a pretty significant early reveal (not that it’d be too difficult to immediately figure it out anyway, since it is an M. Night Shyamalan movie).
HIM being the operative word here. The father is the killer. Well that saved me 20 bucks.
The spoiler in question really is revealed almost immediately so knowing that alone isn’t a reason to skip the movie. The movie is the reason to skip the movie.
Ok, I went ahead and read the Wikipedia plot summary.
You just ain’t kidding! Stupid from stem to stern, top to bottom, inside and out.
I started rooting for The Killer to get away with it. Maybe he did…or…did he?
I thank you all for helping me avoid this one.
Yeah that was my biggest problem with the film. All the other characters were just so stupid.
So The Killer knows it’s a trap, and just doesn’t…walk away? If they had anything, they’d arrest him or her privately. What did the Feebs think The Killer was going to do - murder people at the concert? I’m mad and I didn’t even hear of the film until this thread!
I’m beginning to wonder of Shamalamadingdong stole The Sixth Sense from a better, competent writer. It just doesn’t fit with…every other movie he made. It makes sense, and is pretty consistent and plays fair all the way.
My biggest issues is it was written and acted like a High School play and was supremely boring and slow paced. There is a germ of a good idea here. Make the guy an assassin whose target is at the concert, the police know he is there but don’t know who he is or who his target is. He is trying to avoid the authorities, kill his target and get out safely all while keeping his daughter in the dark and there you have a pretty good concept for a movie.
I would have liked to see the movie implied in the trailer–guy goes to a concert with his daughter, guy learns the whole concert is a trap to catch a serial killer, guy’s daughter goes missing, guy has to find his daughter at the concert and gets caught up in the hunt for the killer. Making the guy the serial killer in the first place seemed to take the wind out of the plot’s sails, it felt to me. Also I couldn’t quite buy Hartnett, with his domestic nice-guy paternal image in the film, as a murderer.
That being said, I think this is a step in the right direction for Shyamalan; not a look-at-me-I’m-so-clever twist, but a thriller with a neat idea (concert as trap for one person) behind it, even if I think he should have gone with a different approach to the plot.
I thought the plot was pretty ridiculous and frankly stupid, but I enjoyed the acting. It was fun watching the intersecting slices of life between the random characters, from modern kids to pop stars to housewives to concessionaires to the police. It was more character backgrounds (even if they were only background characters) then you’d usually get out of a thriller like this.
I found it to be one of the more enjoyable Shamalayan movies. They’re all pretty stupid, let’s he honest, but I had a good time through this one. Watched it on Max, though, and glad I didn’t pay for it
How was that supposed to work? Why are you setting a trap for one person at a crowed concert venue with 40K people? (or however many. I assume this wasn’t a hundred seat hall.) Did they know the specific man they were looking for? (The only guy at the Taylor Swift concert? 
) Were they going to screen everyone leaving (“Hi. Are you the Butcher? no? Ok you can go.”) It makes no damn sense!
I read it was based on the real life case where a bunch of people with warrants were all given free passes to a concert(?) and when they showed up they were all arrested. But that’s different than the movie. The 40K people at the movie’s concert weren’t all “in on it”.
If they knew who they wanted and had any evidence they would just arrest him at home. If they didn’t know, he could have just…walked out of the concert. Either way, telling random vendors about the trap is a stupid move.
I don’t enjoy the film as much as I hoped, but your problems with it aren’t actually problems if you watch it. They don’t know who he is, just that a receipt for a ticket was found at a crime scene, and they are watching all the exits for anyone leaving.
Actually I did rather enjoy the first half of the film, it’s the second half that just got too stupid for me.
Yeah that part didn’t bother me if you accept the premise that they found evidence the killer would be there (it was a stretch how they set this up but I can meet them half way). It’s a concert that is aimed at teenage girls. The number of adult men that would be there is probably a manageable number to investigate if you successfully lock it down.
I’ll grant it may have been covered in the movie (which is why I asked) but
EVERYONE is going to leave after the concert. And if he doesn’t know there is a trap, he won’t leave early.
But if he’s a sharp killer (which from the plot summary, he certainly seems to be), he’ll have no evidence on him. They can’t arrest him for being a man at a teen concert, not when he is clearly taking his daughter.
The best they could hope to get is identify the several men in attendance as a “person of interest”. Which is something, I’ll grant. But you don’t need to tell every employee of this fact.
Unless the Butcher (or is it The Butcher ) is a woman…
Look, it’s better than whatever the fuck Lady in the Water was.
What a twist!
I was hoping that the daughter would end up being the killer…
They call me J. Asking Shyamalan.
I could make great movies. I can come up with plots. It’s dialog I fail at.