10 Recent Horror Movies Ruined By Their Third Act
2. Trap
M. Night Shyamalan's Trap certainly takes an unexpected turn when the psychological horror-thriller shifts setting half-way through, as serial killer Cooper aka The Butcher (Josh Harnett) manages to escape the concert designed to catch him by coaxing singer Lady Raven (Saleka Night Shyamalan) into helping him escape.
The rest of the movie is effectively a cat-and-mouse game as Raven attempts to expose Cooper, one which becomes increasingly silly with each new turn of plot in its thoroughly daft third act.
The utterly absurd finale sees Cooper evade a SWAT team that descends upon the house, before it's revealed that Cooper's wife Rachel (Alison Pill) tipped the FBI off about him in the first place.
Rachel then drugs a piece of pie she serves to Cooper, allowing him to be captured by the authorities, but in a deeply contrived finale, Cooper takes the spoke he was inexplicably allowed to pinch from a bicycle moments earlier and uses it to uncuff himself, implying his escape.
Even for ride-or-die fans of Shyamalan, the sheer avalanche of contrived, implausible storytelling was too much to bear here, squandering a brilliant concept which probably should've stayed contained to the concert venue.