Trap was a solid tension based movie that kept you guessing right up until the end. Josh Hartnett did an outstanding job with his role. He would bounce from the perfect father figure to a scheming serial killer called, The Butcher. This role needed a strong actor to portray the many different personalities that were tightly wound around each other.

M. Night Shyamalan is hands down my favorite director in the industry. I love how his movies always make you pay attention. You just know there is going to be something you get wrong and by the end of the movie you figure out you were totally wrong about everything. He’s really good at that. With Trap though, it wasn’t as secretive to me as, let’s say, The 6th Sense. If you don’t go in thinking that it will be a total mind bender, you’ll enjoy it more. I don’t think you’ll over think this one. It’s still very good, just not quite as good as his other movies.

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This would be a great date night movie. It’ll give you something to talk about and dissect over a nice dinner. Enjoy!

Grade: B

About The Peetimes: There are 2 great Peetimes to choose from. The 1st Peetime is longer in case you need more time.

There are extra scenes during, or after, the end credits of Trap.

Plot
A father and his teen daughter attend a pop concert only to realize they’ve entered the center of a dark and sinister event.

Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain

It is 1960 in America and an impossibly young John F. Kennedy is campaigning for president. Alice (Jessica Chastain) and Celine (Anne Hathaway) are neighbours and best friends. Their husbands, Simon (Anders Danielsen Lie) and Damian (Josh Charles), are doing well at work and their young sons, Theo (Eamon O’Connell) and Max (Baylen D. Bielitz), are friends too, in and out of each other’s houses.

The film opens with Alice throwing a surprise party for Celine. There are discussions of how Kennedy is too young to be running for president and during cocktails, when Simon makes a joke of the Kennedys expecting on the campaign trail, there is awkwardness as Celine and Damian have had difficulties conceiving.

We learn that Alice was a star reporter at the local newspaper and though Simon does not wish it, Alice is chaffing to go back to work. Like all Stepford scenarios, all is not well in this suburban Eden. Alice is shown to be anxious about Theo, who she hovers over constantly. Celine is the more fun mum entering into the spirit of the boys’ games. Theo’s Granny Jean (Caroline Lagerfelt) with her magic tricks is a great favourite of the boys.

A tragedy drives the friends apart as jealousy, grief and paranoia colour all interactions. There are unreliable narrators galore and skewed perspectives where anyone can be victim or perpetrator. Each tearful rapprochement could be taken at face value or could be the first step to further machinations.

Based on Barbara Abel’s 2012 novel and Olivier Masset-Depasse’s multiple award-winning Belgian-French film Duelles (2018), Mothers’ Instinct is beautiful looking. Masset-Depasse was to direct the English version but left the production making way for cinematographer Benoît Delhomme’s directorial debut, which explains the lovely-looking, golden-lit frames. Chastain and Hathaway look smashing in their ‘60s pencil skirts, blouses in pastel colours, bows and cigarette trousers, perfectly accessorised with high heels, purses and gloves.

As Alice and Celine, Chastain and Hathaway run the gamut of emotions from love, grief and guilt to rage, suspicion and fear. There is a reference to the habit of consigning the so-called ‘problem women’ to metaphoric attics. The actors’ fine work is not backed by the script that skitters this way and that like a frightened mouse in an overlarge sand pit.

The abrupt shifts in tone keeps the viewer off-kilter till it does not in the third act which quickly devolves into some kind of ‘80s Hindi movie melodrama — one almost expects the women to call each other chudail or dayaan while clawing each other’s eyes out and tearing out the immaculately coiffed hair. On second thoughts, that would have been rather enjoyable. You can spend time with Mothers’ Instinct wondering about the placement of the apostrophe and marvel at the fabulous clothes adorning these beautiful actors who are at the top of their game.

Mothers’ Instinct is currently running in theatres

The impulse to write what you know can be as emboldening as it can be restricting. In director Mikko Mäkelä’s soulful and observant feature “Sebastian,” a young writer grappling with this familiar conundrum begins creating a life for himself designed exclusively to be plundered for his fictional aspirations. In the process he’s forced to reckon with the porous lines he’s drawn between fact and fiction; between who he is and who he’s written himself into becoming.

Born in Edinburgh and making a living in London as a freelance writer, Max (a magnetic Ruaridh Mollica) is aching for more. He’s sick of submitting short stories he’s not too proud of, sick of composing reviews of other people’s work. Like many an ambitious 20-something before him, he feels he’s not doing enough, let alone fast enough. Bret Easton Ellis, whom he’s researching ahead of an interview, published his first novel when he was 21. As a ploy to infuse his writing with a sense of kindled urgency, Max has begun moonlighting as an escort for older men. After every encounter he orchestrates as shy, wily “Sebastian,” he dutifully sits down at his desk to add yet another chapter to his work-in-progress novel: a story about an unabashedly confident sex worker called Sebastian.

The nested-doll structure of Mäkelä’s film speaks to the writer-director’s fascination with the pleasures and perils of autofiction. Max tells himself he’s only partaking in sex work in order to flesh out the ideas he has for his novel. Yet he often feels out of sorts during those moments of sexual intimacy. Shot in tight, tangled closeups and medium shots where hungered flesh and lustful moans overwhelm character and viewer alike, those sex scenes prove to be quite moving, in turn.

Max’s performance on the page, as well as in the sheets, proves endlessly seductive: “You’ve got that wholesome boy-next-door thing going on,” a fellow escort coyly tells him, a flirtation that doubles as a cutting read that garners a sly grin out of him. “But it’s all filth underneath.” And so, as he delves into increasingly thornier scenarios (group chemsex with strangers; repeat meetings with a man who recognizes him at a literary event; a trip abroad paid by a regular customer), Max starts losing track of what he’s getting out of these encounters. He’s growing bolder but also quite boxed in by this secret life he’s come to nurture.

Eventually, those late-night meetings with men who treat him with welcome and rather unexpected tenderness unearth latent feelings Max doesn’t know what to do with. Whatever self-discovery happens, he pours back into his own work. Soon enough, he’s getting plaudits from his editor. He’s lauded for his unvarnished (and marketable) look at gay sex work, devoid of shame and trauma.

In Mollica’s hands, Max is a tightly wound young man who seeks in other people’s eyes a vision of who he is. He’s onscreen (often alone) for much of the film. His constant furtive glances keep us questioning who this lithe young lad really is, to others and especially to himself. Is he a wayward bloke who blows off bar hook-ups for client appointments that will serve as better writing fodder? A driven writer who spends late nights at his keyboard pretending to know those he sleeps with better than they know themselves? An insecure young kid who seeks approval from tricks and peers alike?

“I carve out my existence in the world using words,” Max tells an interviewer when discussing his writing. “They are the footsteps I leave in my wake.” It’s the kind of line he immediately regrets uttering, thinking it too self-serious. But crippling self-seriousness is all young writers like Max have. When his novel, like his meetings with one particular client (played with gentle beauty by Jonathan Hyde), becomes slightly more romantic, his editor insists he return to the unsparing tone he’d so perfectly honed before.

Striking a fine balance between lurid voyeurism and grounded naturalism, Mäkelä’s film is a gripping wonder, perhaps a tad too literate, with its nods not only to Ellis but to authors like Jean Genet and Cyril Collard. But with its keen, sensual eye, “Sebastian” makes its portrait of an artist as a young sex worker brim with pained authenticity about how fleeting and seemingly transactional intimacies remain rife sites of exploration for queer writers.