By Bob Grimm

When M. Night Shyamalan plays around with aliens or the supernatural, the results can be quite good, and even excellent (Signs, Split). But Trap proves that when he’s playing around without the supernatural or aliens, he’s just bonkers in a way that confounds and frustrates.

In Shyamalan’s latest attempt to emulate Hitchcock, Josh Hartnett stars as Cooper, a crafty serial killer with undertones of Norman Bates from Psycho. (He sees visions of his departed mom throughout the movie.) Hartnett, experiencing an acting renaissance of late, gives it his all, but Shyamalan’s goofy, flat-footed, predictable and outrageously inept screenplay starts letting him down before the midway point.

The entire setup for this movie will make you scream, “Bullshit … this could never happen.” Authorities get a hunch that Hartnett’s killer, nicknamed “The Butcher” (Shyamalan really thought hard for that creative serial-killer name), is going to be attending a concert by Lady Raven (Saleka Shyamalan) with his daughter, Riley (Ariel Donoghue). The concert is a big, elaborate “trap,” with policemen and FBI agents surrounding the giant venue and walking around inside, in plain sight.

A large part of the movie involves Cooper trying to find a way out of the venue without being caught. He goes backstage by assisting a merch vendor who is fetching a T-shirt for him. (Merch vendors at concerts often take customers along for backstage supply runs, right?) He mingles with officers and steals stuff like walkie talkies and pass cards. At one point, he persuades an employee of the artist (a not-very-surprising cameo) to make his daughter a special guest of Raven onstage, getting him backstage yet again.

Basically, Shyamalan’s laughable screenplay provides Cooper with whatever he needs, with twists that are either wholly predictable or mind-bogglingly stupid. Shyamalan figures if he can think it up and put it on paper, well, then he can most assuredly put it up there on the screen, no matter how dopey or contrived it is. Parts were so predictable that I started laughing out loud, and perhaps disturbing those around me, although I could hear a lot of other folks laughing and muttering right along with me.

I can’t stress it enough: This is screenwriting at its laziest, most-obvious, insultingly stupid worst. By the time all credibility has been exhausted, Trap goes into a third act involving deeper involvement from Lady Raven. (Shyamalan’s daughter can sing OK, but she can’t act, at least not in this movie.) By the time Cooper is sitting with his wife, Rachel (Alison Pill), for one last big twist involving pie, most of the audience members had mentally checked out and were checking baseball scores and social media on their phones.

Shyamalan does something here he’s done before: He overexplains things, because he can’t give his audience enough credit. There’s a shot in this movie involving that aforementioned pie that prompted me to get angry upon beholding it. How dare ye, Shyamalan! How dare ye.

If I am spoiling something by mentioning pie, I really don’t care. I should spoil everything in this movie for you and spare you the trouble of going. The damned trailer gave 80% of the plot away anyway.

Who knows what Shyamalan will do in the future with the Cooper character? After all, he tends to bring characters back for more chapters. Cooper is almost superhuman when cops are tasering him, so maybe he’s a distant cousin of the killer in Split. I certainly hope not. I don’t care to see any characters or hear any music from the movie Trap again.