As a Father of Daughters: Trap (M. Night Shyamalan, 2024)

Welcome to December! It's time to get your pre-order in for Be Not Afraid #5, which is out in January with a final order cut-off of December 22. Enjoy some gorgeous cover art here.

It's also holiday gift-giving season. Consider bestowing your friends and relatives with a copy of DILF: Did I Leave Feminism, available at Barnes & Noble, Amazon and your local bookstore via Bookshop.org. Not many books have a smell, let alone a good one, but this one does, courtesy of our fine friends at Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab.

Before we begin, a warning: Trap is an M. Night Shyamalan movie, and as such, it hinges on a twist. That twist happens in the first act, rather than the end of the third, but it’s still key to the viewer’s enjoyment. It’s best to go in relatively unprepared, with no expectations, except for the knowledge that your laughter will not be an accident or a failing on the part of the filmmaker — the latter-day M. Night Shyamalan is aware of his own ridiculousness, and the movie is supposed to be funny. 

What I can tell you now, above the fold, is that Trap has earned its title as the Most Girldad Movie of All Time. As such, I support it. Traditional masculinity and I have our differences, but “Girldad” is a gender identity that I can get one hundred percent behind. The movie is about a doting, uncool, almost claustrophobically involved and supportive dad — a hero and role model for our times, clearly — taking his daughter to a concert by her favorite pop star. 

That favorite pop star is, of course, the legendary LADY RAVEN, aka M. Night Shyamalan’s daughter, and he made this entire movie because he thinks his daughter is a great musician and wanted to give her a movie where she was the most famous and beloved singer in the world. Nothing is too good for M. Night Shyamalan’s princess, the fantastic and showstopping LADY RAVEN!! Witness, as LADY RAVEN sings for you a variety of mid-tempo ballads while sort of lightly swaying from side to side!!! 

So, yes: M. Night Shyamalan is being a girldad via his movie about girldads. He made a whole movie as, essentially, a Sweet Sixteen gift. This is delightful. Adding to the delight is the fact that M. Night Shyamalan has no idea what contemporary pop music looks like. The “concert” features a heartthrob in a transparent pink hoodie who looks like Meth Jesus, women with miniature picnic tables on their heads doing frantic writhing during a slow piano number, and, naturally, Kid Cudi as a platinum-blonde rodeo vampire who screams about kombucha. 

Yet the movie’s greatest triumph, its ultimate delight – its dadsterpiece, if you will – is the casting of Josh Hartnett (!!) as Girldad, as if M. Night Shyamalan knows exactly how old you’d need to be to get your mind blown by The Sixth Sense (Josh Hartnett years old) and understands that those kids are all corny dads now. Even when they’re women, or childless, they’re corny dads. I don’t make the rules. 

But for those of us who are dads to actual human children — particularly those who have been granted that most sacred task, being a Dad to Girls — this movie is a chance to see ourselves reflected on screen, a chance we are all too often denied due to the saddening and pervasive dadphobia of mainstream culture. 

Yet, inevitably, there comes the moment when Josh Hartnett, God-Tier Girldad, goes to the restroom. And pulls out his phone. And the noise of heavy breathing and ragged moans starts emitting from the phone, while he stares at it, with great intensity. And —