Viewing the manhunt for a killer from the killer's point of view is a good premise for a thriller, one that was done classically by Fritz Lang in M (1931). And M. Night Shyamalan gets off on the right foot by casting the attractive, underrated, and underused actor Josh Hartnett in the lead. He plays Cooper, the psychopath next door, a capable and loving family man whom no one would suspect of being a serial killer called The Butcher. He is just being a good dad when he takes his 12-year-old daughter, Riley (Ariel Donoghue), to a concert by her favorite pop star, Lady Raven (Saleka Shyamalan), only to find out that the arena is under tight surveillance by the police and the FBI under the supervision of a profiler (Hayley Mills, in the most improbable bit of casting in this or any other year). Will he be able to outwit his pursuers? Do we really want him to? Unfortunately, Shyamalan botches things in working out the plot, in large part by making the concert, of which we see much more than necessary, a crashing bore. The writer-director's daughter, Saleka, wrote and performed her own rather lackluster songs, one of the instances that justify the phrase "nepo baby." She's also not up to the acting demands of the role when she's off-stage. Worst of all, the film ends with a scene that leaves room for a sequel. I'm surely not the first one to suggest that it be called Claptrap?
