It's interesting how the phrase 'not one of their best films' can throw into sharp relief exactly just what kind of critical esteem a director is held in. When it comes to someone like Stanley Kubrick or Akira Kurosawa, 'not one of his best' could mean a film on the level of Barry Lyndon or Dersu Uzala   – in other words, something which most mere mortals would consider a very considerable achievement.

But should we come to the strange case of M Night Shyamalan, a writer-director for whom consistency has proven maddeningly elusive over the course of a career now stretching for a quarter of a century. Shyamalan has done some pretty good films in that time. He has also managed to churn out quite a few things which are definitely contenders for the 'load of old rubbish' file, which gives each new project an exciting, uncertain quality – is it going to be a clever, inventive new take on genre material? Or just another load of preposterous tosh blighted by an implausible twist and clobbered even further by the director's insistence on casting himself in a supporting role?

Shyamalan is back with his new film, Trap, which is notable for a number of things, firstly the reappearance of a couple of faces we haven't really seen for a while. Front and centre is Josh Hartnett, for whom the dubious heights of films like Black Hawk Down and Pearl Harbor lie decades in the past (though he was also in Oppenheimer, which I'd forgotten about). He plays Cooper, a guy in early middle-age who is taking his daughter to a concert showcasing her favourite pop star. His daughter is played by Ariel Donoghue, who is perfectly okay in a part which a lot of people will quite naturally find irritating.

I've never been to a big pop concert so all the scenes of them arriving at the arena and going through ticket checks, etc, was interesting and novel for me; it's clear that something funny is going on in the context of the film, as Cooper quite obviously notices that there are an unusual number of police officers on the scene – there's also a moment after the start of the concert when a whole division of SWAT officers turns up, led by a mysterious older woman.

All this is in the first ten or fifteen minutes of the film, so wouldn't usually qualify as spoileriffic. But one gets a sense that some of what transpires is supposed to come as a surprise, even though it is featured in the trailer. I'm going to go ahead and spill the beans anyway, because it would be very difficult to write meaningfully about Trap otherwise. The whole question of spoiling it is made more complex by the fact that. . . well, put it this way, it's not one of M Night Shyamalan's best films.

It turns out the police are here in force because they suspect a vicious serial killer will be putting in an appearance and they want to be sure of bagging him. When Cooper discovers this news he seems to be unusually exercised by it – could it be that he himself is the killer? Or is Shyamalan's trademark twist going to be that there's another, devilishly clever explanation for this? It's the former, I'm afraid: the twist is that this isn't the twist. The actual twist is near the end and turns out to be more of a kink as it involves a character we've only just met doing something which isn't necessarily that surprising.

Well, if nothing else this sets up an interesting sort of narrative, a peculiar spin on Die Hard where rather than a lone central hero contending against a big mob of villains, we have a single, highly resourceful and motivated anti-hero desperate to avoid the clutches of the law. Shyamalan handles this unexpectedly well, with Hartnett proving rather compelling to watch – a director of the first rank would have managed to make him borderline sympathetic despite the fact he does some rather shocking things, even early in the film.

'Silence of the Lambs at a Taylor Swift concert' was supposedly Shyamalan's pitch for the movie, which is high concept enough; for the first hour or so it rattles along relatively breezily, even if you're inevitably aware of how contrived and melodramatic it is. You can tell that the idea of doing a movie set mostly at a pop concert came first, and everything else came second (we shall return to the reasons for this). Despite his best efforts, Hartnett ends up really struggling to do anything with a character who sometimes feels intentionally thinly drawn. This is just one of many ominous signs heralding the point at which the film terminally loses the plot.

Initially it's just casting. It turns out the mysterious old woman is a brilliant profiler called Jo Grant, who is working the serial killer case. Fair enough, but for the oddity of Shyamalan having cast Hayley Mills (erstwhile juvenile star of films like Whistle down the Wind and Pollyanna, not to mention The Parent Trap) in the part. She's perfectly fine, by the way, and it's nice to see her again. Less familiar is the actress playing Lady Raven, the pop star whose concert the film largely occurs at. This would usually be a good part for an established popstrel seeking to establish themselves in movies – but Lady Gaga's already made that move and Arianna Grande was presumably busy doing Wicked at the time. So M Night Shyamalan has taken a chance on the little-known singer-songwriter Saleka, or, as she is known to her friends and family, Saleka Night Shyamalan. Well, I say. . . and what I'm inclined to say is 'this is utterly shameless nepotism even by Hollywood standards', and this is before we even get to the fact that the film apparently had its genesis when the two Nights put their heads together about a joint cross-promotional exercise.

In case you are wondering, Shyamalan pere still does his usual trick of casting himself. . . as his daughter's character's uncle. I don't think it is particularly unfair to observe that Shyamalan fille shows just as much effortless versatility as a performer as her father, although her music is fairly inoffensive. As long as she's up on stage singing it's less of an issue, but there's only so long her dad can milk the concert setting for – and so for the third act the film executes a horribly clumsy gear-shift in which the action goes elsewhere and the position of de facto lead character transfers from Hartnett to her. Almost at once this sends the film from the flawed-but-acceptable bracket to the inexcusable-cobblers one, and it gets worse – it feels like there's an attempt at a fourth act, and then a fifth one with Alison Pill as the protagonist even though she only appears in the last thirty minutes. . .

The first two-thirds of the film show considerable skill, within quite rigid constraints, and there are reasonably effective performances. The last half hour is just nonsense, badly written and badly acted and directed. As a psycho-thriller it generates, at best, a sort of vague sense of mild unease. As far as the Shyamalan canon goes, this is down there with After Earth as a piece of thorough-going cobblers. How does Shyamalan manage to keep getting his films financed? (Research indicates he puts his own money into them.) Oh well. If nothing else this one should do wonders for the father-daughter relationship.

Awix

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