so in the first game of the recent Hitman trilogy, the first real level takes place at a fashion show in a Paris estate. you can traverse most of the first floor freely, as your suit denotes you as a normal audience member. but to advance steadily up to the top floor, where one of your targets is working, you'll need to find more and more disguises to denote that you have the right to be in more exclusive areas. but there's a trick: if you climb up a pipe on the back of the building, you can head straight to the top floor, where an auction is being held for members of high society. if you do this, you don't even need to change into a disguise. a nondescript man in a suit blends into the crowd up here perfectly. no one asks questions if you look like you belong, and a space can take on an entirely new meaning depending on one's perspective.

this is the central idea that Trap explores so ingeniously. things start out rather subtly as Cooper and his daughter Riley enter the arena for the concert. what should be a space for safe and harmless fun keeps being intruded upon by signifiers of danger. the camera glances at security cameras being installed, or cops (so many cops) pulling people out of their seats. we see, in Cooper's mind, the context of the space being rewritten. its newfound hostility requires more of his attention, so we get a lot of POV shots from his perspective as he scans the area for escape routes. part of the fun here is getting let in on Cooper's superhuman attention to detail.

another part of the fun is getting to live vicariously through a man who is not bound by any kind of social contract. normal people understand that a door marked "employees only" should be left alone. through Cooper, we get to feel the thrill of not only going somewhere we don't belong, but getting away with pretending that we do. much like Agent 47 in Hitman exposes the arbitrary nature of rules-bound spaces when he climbs that pipe to the top floor, Cooper shows us how those rules are only enforced by collective agreement and a kind of honor system. when he wanders around an employee lounge filled with SWAT officers, all he needs to do is superficially behave like he belongs, and no one questions his presence. through Cooper's eyes, a space typically bound by social restriction becomes a performer's playground, albeit one where the "play" is constructed around life-or-death tension.

the tactics are alternately desperate and shockingly successful, which accounts for the tonal shifts. when Cooper tries to convince Riley to jump into a trap door with him "just to see what's down there" it's hilarious, because it feels both like a panicked killer making a last-ditch attempt to escape AND a cringe-inducing dad presenting an absurd activity to his daughter. Hartnett plays both sides of the coin brilliantly, adeptly showing how much of each exists within the other. his wholesome awkwardness with Riley is not far removed from the uncanny-valley sociopathy he displays when the mask drops.

the third act shifts away from the concert, which i know bothered some people. things in the arena are wound so tightly that i understand feeling like the film unspools when the characters leave. but i actually think this is where the film really shows how brilliant it is. we've spent the whole film up to this point watching Cooper analyze an unfamiliar location and try to master its secrets. but now we're back on his home turf, and he has to do the exact same thing all over again. what was previously the safest place in the world for him is injected with an element he cannot control, and now he has to think of his home the way he was just thinking of the arena, as a labyrinth with few safe exits. when he locks his family in a bedroom, they escape out the window using a tree branch. he failed to see this coming because he never had occasion to think of his own home in the context of "escape" before (barring his one failsafe secret passage). and from here it's pure chaos, Cooper flailing as he tries again and again to get away clean in ever more cartoonish fashion. when he finally returns home, it's no longer a bright and cheery refuge. it's a dark, frightening dungeon, and he's too consumed with emotion to think critically about the logic of its space anymore. this is what finally does him in.

what's so brilliant about Trap is how it uses perspective shifts to constantly recontextualize its spaces. when the third act hits, it's not just Cooper, but Lady Raven scouting the house (at first in a dizzying 360-degree pan) for exits and useful items. when they first enter the house, Cooper is right at home, but Lady Raven is in the lion's den. the exact same space at the exact same time, seen in two entirely different ways. even the constrained space of the limousine constantly morphs, as Lady Raven uses her fans to take control and free herself, trapping Cooper in the same space he was freely operating just moments before. the film ends with Cooper in the back of a prisoner transport van, a featureless box where you'd think he has nothing left to work with. but then he does his best Norman Bates smile and pulls out the last trick from (quite literally) up his sleeve. even a room with nothing in it can be commandeered.