This article contains spoilers for Catch.

Over the past two decades, M. Night Shyamalan has written and directed a variety of horror and thriller films. His 199th film The sixth sense received six Oscar nominations and cemented his status as a horror and thriller creative to watch. With other critical and audience successes such as Unbreakable, Split, And Signs, Shyamalan’s twists and dynamic camerawork showed that he was no one-hit wonder. However, not all of his films were so enthusiastically received. Old, The Lord of the Elements, And After Earth were panned by critics and audiences alike. For some film fans, he became a director who was sometimes good and sometimes bad, who made films that ranged from solid to truly great, but who was also behind some of the most panned films of the 2010s.

Catchhis latest release, which he wrote and directed, was released in theaters on August 2nd and received the usual polarizing reviews.

Shyamalan’s films have often received high praise in recent years, but online reviews and reactions seemed to be mixed. The film received an average rating of 3.0 out of 5 stars on Letterboxd and a 53% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The film follows Cooper, played by Josh Hartnett, a father who takes his teenage daughter to a pop concert, only to discover that the whole show was a sting operation to catch a serial killer – himself. The film may not have succeeded on all fronts, but thanks to a well-used central setting and a warm familial relationship at its core, it managed to get people talking. Catch Suspense is created by using a unique, claustrophobic setting and focusing on a father-daughter relationship so sincere that the audience may have to expect the butcher’s escape.

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The unconventional setting was Trap’s greatest strength

One of the biggest attractions of Catch was the unique setting. The decision to shoot the first two acts of the film at a pop concert allowed Shyamalan to make the most of the stadium and all its aspects. It was a fantastic contrast: so many fans, including Cooper’s own daughter, were having the best night of their lives, while he spent every moment of the show staying on his feet, stressed and with his back against the wall the entire time. The use of pop music, a genre associated with lightheartedness, for the soundtrack provided a nice contrast to the tension that simmered and built as the film progressed. Cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom created a realistic and visually stunning concert. Red and blue light flooded the concert scenes. While these colors were those of the police sirens, the red also represented the burning anger and panic Cooper felt throughout. Catch looked more sophisticated than films with three times the budget of $30 million.

Cooper could only slip through a certain number of employee entrances and there were only a limited number of possible exits. A sold-out concert as the film’s main setting also contributed to a sense of claustrophobia.

Wherever Cooper went, from the rooftop to the bathroom, there were people. There was nowhere for him to hide, or even a few minutes alone to form a more coherent and well thought out plan for himself. The frequent use of close-ups emphasized how trapped Cooper felt in the venue, his pained expressions and panic clearly visible to the audience. Viewers could see every micro-expression of stress that Hartnett skillfully displayed on his face, the camera lingering on him and those he interacted so closely with, reflecting how Cooper was so closely watched from the moment he entered the concert. He was literally trapped – by other people, by the few exits, and by police searching every corner inside and outside the stadium.

Even when the story changed gears in the third act and took place in Cooper’s house and the suburbs where he lived, the camera stayed close to the main character, and zooms, pans and tracking shots also made a return. Back at the concert, there was a good old-fashioned split-diopter shot reminiscent of Brian De Palma. Shyamalan also moved the camera often for pans and tracking shots, which kept the story moving and the tension high. Shyamalan, in Catch and his previous projects have also used zooms to great effect. Here, zooming in on Cooper showed the cops closing in on him. Even at the very end of the film, when, after using his final act of freedom to straighten his daughter’s bike in the front yard, he uses a spoke he stole from said bike to unlock his handcuffs, the camera stayed close, focusing on his hands before panning back to Cooper’s smiling, triumphant expression. He may have lost his entire family, but he proved that even the best police teams couldn’t successfully catch him.

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Trap’s central father-daughter relationship raised the stakes

The core relationship of Catch lied about Cooper’s relationship with his daughter Riley. The script allowed for moments of father-daughter bonding, like Cooper asking Riley about how she’s excluded from her friends and how he tries to learn the lingo of his much younger daughter’s generation. It helped that Hartnett, a girl dad himself, and actress Ariel Donoghue got along perfectly, building a surprisingly sweet and believable relationship. As Cooper kept leaving to scout out possible exits, Riley was genuinely sad that he couldn’t enjoy the concert with her. Making Cooper a great dad gave the character depth and an extra sinister layer. He may have been a murderer, but he loved his child and wanted the best for her.

The warm, natural father-daughter relationship made one of the film’s final scenes all the more heartbreaking. When Cooper was finally caught and led away from his house in handcuffs, Riley ran to him and gave her father one last tearful hug. Cooper’s buying of concert tickets to make his daughter happy ultimately led to his secret double life imploding. Ironically, his role as a good and caring father ended in him losing his daughter forever. Before he was finally taken down, he even lamented to his wife that he would never see Riley and his son grow up. Harnett’s voice dripped with sadness and genuine pain, making it clear how much his daughter meant to him. Even after he was caught, he was most concerned about his children. This created an interesting moral dilemma for the audience. How could a sadistic serial killer also be such an attentive, loving father?

Shyamalan himself had two daughters, one of whom played Lady Raven in the film. Saleka Shyamalan wrote and recorded all of Lady Raven’s songs for Catch too. The theme of parenthood, specifically being a father to a daughter, was at the core of the film. Through the spirit of Cooper’s film, it was revealed to the audience that his childhood shaped him into the murderer he is today. His mother, who had no idea how to raise such an angry child, simply punished him over and over, and for all of his many, perverse mistakes, Cooper didn’t do that to his own children. However, this revelation was a shortcoming of the script. It could have delved more into Cooper’s backstory and shown how an angry child grows up to be such a monster, but keeps that side of himself hidden from his children. Still, the father-daughter dynamic between Cooper and Riley provided moments of levity and warmth amidst the tension of the film.

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M. Night Shyamalan continued his series of original and bold films

Shyamalan will never be everyone’s filmmaker. There will always be criticism of his work, both positive and negative, in both a good and bad sense. But after almost two decades of his career, he continued to make original films and even made adaptations of his books such as Old And Knock on the hut feel uniquely his own. He has consistently done great things and taken bold risks in terms of storytelling, but his films always feel like they were made with love and care. In a world full of sequels, reboots and IP films, Shyamalan has not only consistently created original works, but often financed them himself.

Shyamalan took a relatively simple idea of ​​a cat-and-mouse thriller and gave it his own twist, resulting in the sometimes chaotic but always entertaining Catch. Whether it was its fluid and varied shot selection, the strong performances of its leads, or the great cinematography and sound design, the film was a thrilling rollercoaster ride in which its loyal fans and even casual moviegoers can find at least a little bit of summer fun. Catch felt like the culmination of his two decades in the industry, a love letter to the fathers and daughters out there and to anyone who has ever gone to a concert and suddenly found themselves itching to leave.

Trap is in theaters now.

Catch

Plot details remain secret, true to M. Night Shyamalan style. What we do know is that the film is based on a concert and deals with themes such as suspense and psychological manipulation. Expect unexpected twists, shocking revelations and a spooky atmosphere.

director

M. Night Shyamalan

Release date

2 August 2024

Pour

Josh Hartnett, Hayley Mills, Marnie McPhail, Vanessa Smythe, Saleka Shyamalan, Malik Jubal, Jonathan Langdon, Peter D’Souza, Ty Pravong, Kaitlyn Dallan

Authors

M. Night Shyamalan

Studio(s)

Blinding Edge Pictures, New Line Cinema

Sales Partner

Warner Bros. Pictures, New Line Cinema

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