Reviewed by Alicia Glass
A father with a giant secret attends a pop concert with his teenage daughter, to find themselves caught up in a sinister game of cat and mouse!
Where to begin, with this latest offering from the King of Plot Twists, director M. Night Shyamalan himself. It could be said that in recent years, Shyamalans film offerings have been rather hit or miss, mostly miss, even with great actors like Dave Bautista in main character roles, as in Knock At The Cabin. But somehow people keep going to see his movies, hoping for a return to the insanely great twists in the style of The Sixth Sense, or even anything close to it. Make sure you have your tickets for the concert, and lets get into this!
So our dad Cooper (Josh Hartnett) is taking his beloved babygirl, I meant daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue), to see a concert of the insanely popular singer Lady Raven (directors own daughter, Saleka Shyamalan). Just imagine any Swifty tour stage showing, and you’ll be right there with us. The arena is huge and quite crowded, packed with fans of all ages and sizes, but Cooper happens to notice something odd about things too – there are an awful lot of cops around. And I don’t mean tour security, singer bodyguards or rent-a-cops, no, these are actual policemen and women in full uniform, armed to their teeth and trying to coordinate something big amongst themselves while remaining laughably unobtrusive at the same time. What could they be doing?
Coop is quite protective of his girl, and while Riley is a huge Lady Raven fan like all the rest of them, she’s also kind of bummed about troubling goings-on that have been happening to her at school lately, mainly issues with schoolmate Jody and her mom (Marnie McPhail). And even as Coop starts doing some investigating of his own to find out what all the cops are up to, he tries very hard to shield Riley from anything that could upset her further, which means a lot of issues to juggle all at once.
It turns out, the cops have hatched a plan to catch a serial killer, an insanely clever person who’s already kidnapped and killed several unfortunate victims. Rumor has it, as the oh-so-helpful souvenir seller Jamie (Jonathon Langdon) gossips to Coop as an aside, that the cops somehow know the killer is going to be here, at this particular concert event, today. How could they possibly know such a thing?
Shyamalan is generally mostly known for tossing in his giant twists towards the end of his movies, so the reveal that Cooper himself is the serial killer the cops are hunting for, isn’t a reveal at all really. Be assured, loyal fans, that there is in fact a giant twist still a-coming, so we have to continue to watch to find out what it is.
We know that the whole movie wouldn’t be held entirely at the concert, especially when Coop starts trying to overtly outsmart the criminal psychologist Dr. Josephine Grant (Hayley Mills) and the cops directly, basically by ingratiating his daughter with Lady Raven up on stage and even afterwards. Somewhere in there we get the cameo director Shyamalan is always known for, too. And what happens after the concert in Coop’s own house, with the frighteningly brave actions of Lady Raven under the horrified eyes of Coops’ wife Rachel (Allison Pill), makes most of the lead-up to get here worthwhile. Who’s the real mastermind behind the trap to catch a serial killer? You have to stay to the very end, watch the entire trap play out, to find out!