A friend of mine and I were planning to see this movie when it was in theaters, but we ended up missing it for various reasons, and I never got around to it. Well now it’s debuted on HBO and I finally got to see it.

This film is written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, and even if you’ve never seen a single film of his, you know that his trademark is the PLOT TWIST. So I want to try to avoid giving away too many spoilers, but one may be unavoidable.

But, of course, the trailers already gave away the biggest plot twist:

Josh Hartnett stars as Cooper Abbott, a seemingly normal, happily married suburban dad and firefighter, who takes his teenage daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to see a concert performed by Lady Raven (Saleka Shyamalan), a superstar pop singer (clearly modeled after Taylor Swift). Cooper then finds out that the police have set up the concert as a sting operation to catch a serial killer dubbed “The Butcher,” whom they have found out is planned to be at the concert, which sucks for him because he is “The Butcher.” So now Cooper has to find a way to get out of the arena without getting caught or arousing Riley’s suspicions.

The film is only about an hour and forty minutes long, which I find to be a tad refreshing as it seems that most big films are getting longer and longer whether they need to be or not. Now, here comes a bit of a spoiler:

The first hour is all about Cooper’s efforts to sneak out of the arena. And, in my opinion, that is the best part of this film. I loved it. Cooper’s attempts to find a way out while trying to maintain his facade of normalcy, which gets harder as he becomes increasingly desperate, is so well-played. I was hooked as the tension continued to rise. Hartnett’s performance is perfect, he nails the role. The large arena felt claustrophobic, with Cooper as a rat in a maze. There are multiple moments where you’re expecting him to make a fatal mistake, which he almost does, and I could almost feel his fear and then relief each time. This setting should have been the entire film, stay in the arena for the entire film until the ending scene.

Unfortunately, this is when Shyamalan has Cooper and Riley manage to get out, which is when the film started to go downhill.

I won’t say how, but the way Cooper pulled off the escape really strains plausibility. But the next 20 minutes are okay, as even though he’s out of the arena, he is still not completely out of danger of being exposed. And then it leads up to the moment where he is, and seeing Cooper finally drop all pretense and reveal his evil side is suitably intense, another great performance from Hartnett, but there’s still 20 minutes left in the film, and it’s that last act that drags this film down.

The tension of the possibility of Cooper getting caught only to get out of it is clever during the first hour, but then it becomes repetitive in that final act. They pull the “this is it, he’s done! Oh, nope, not yet” card one too many times, so by the time it finally happens, it just doesn’t feel as satisfying as you’d think it would. There is one more big plot twist regarding how the police knew The Butcher would be at the concert, but it’s not super-shocking, and the last scene is…well, I’ll just say it’s odd.

There is a funny mid-credits scene, though, so stick around for that.

In addition to Hartnett, I also enjoyed the performance of Ariel Donoghue as Riley, who comes off as a genuine Swiftie. Other standouts in the cast are Alison Pill as Cooper’s wife Rachel, Hayley Mills as an FBI criminal profiler who is helping the police track Cooper, Jonathan Langdon in a small but crucial role as Jamie, the concert vendor who alerts Cooper about the sting operation, and despite all of the nepotism accusations that I’m sure she’s destined to get, Saleka Shyamaln pulled off a sincere performance as Lady Raven, who’s role turns out to be bigger than I expected.

All of these cast members did excellent jobs with the material they were given, which is what makes this film so frustrating, as I really feel that this had the potential to be great. But the best I can give this film is a Chacebook rating of THREE STARS.