M. Night Shyamalan’s Very Sinister Dad Joke

Having scored floor seats for himself and his teenage daughter at a sold-out stadium date by the world’s reigning pop star, a distracted dad spends the majority of the show looking desperately for a way out: “Let me know what I miss,” he tells her on his umpteenth head-clearing walk to the merch table. Such is the wry generational joshing informing M. Night Shyamalan’s latest thriller, Trap, which speaks to our present pop-cultural moment with the same stilted, earnest eloquence that is its writer-director’s stock in trade, even as it wrings variations on his pet concerns and preoccupations, including parental anxiety, surveillance, and the essentially paranoid texture of everyday life. Twenty-five years into a career whose trajectory is at least as twistily implausible as his screenplays, Shyamalan has fused together showmanship and self-awareness in the manner of a seasoned popular entertainer; by turns gripping and goofy—and directly angled toward mainstream consumption while slyly addressing his most committed fans—Trap is M. Night’s Eras Tour.