Despite the fact that it’s directed by Michael Dowse (Stuber) and comes from a story credit by Gary Scott Thompson (The Fast and the Furious), Trap House manages to not entirely fall into the familiar action genre tropes both creatives have expressed before. It isn’t shaking up the ground in any manner, but its blend of machismo-driven physicality with a genuine sense of emotionality around parents protecting their kids, and how one personally navigates their own grief, lends the film an air of appreciated novelty.
Thompson’s script – written in collaboration with Tom O’Connor (The Hitman’s Bodyguard) – initially paints a familiar picture, focusing on a duo of DEA agents, Ray (Dave Bautista) and Andre (Bobby Cannavale), and their work on the front lines of the drug trade at the El Paso, Texas, border. Knowing the type of danger they’re putting both themselves and the children in, they keep their own faces hidden and the identities of their spawn a secret.
Their children – including Ray’s son, Cody (Jack Champion) – aren’t blind to the fact as to what their parents do for a living, but the general public are under the impression that Ray’s crew all work together for a construction company. Where the film lays its first seed of shifting away from the expected narrative is with Jesse (Blu del Barrio), one of the DEA agents’ children who has recently been slain in a mission gone wrong; the scene where they find out rather heartbreaking, as Cody and the other DEA kids (Whitney Peak, Zaire Adams, Sophia Lillis) wait with baited breath to learn who hasn’t survived this latest raid.
Unable to afford to stay enrolled in school, due to the DEA taking zero responsibility for their fallen own, Jesse and his now-widowed mother move away, prompting Cody to take matters into his own hands. Along with the fellow DEA offspring, Cody devises a plan to rob the cartel and use the monetary profits as a means to help Jesse. It’s a sweet idea, but one we know will have dire consequences, and when the head of the cartel (an appropriately intimidating Tony Dalton) activates his secret weapon (Kate del Castillo) to track down both the DEA agents and their children, Trap House becomes suitably an actioner with elevated stakes.
The film foregoing the expected route of the children being unaware of what their parents do certainly helps Trap House adhere to a certain level of plausibility, with it all feeling easier to swallow as they gain intel and flex their skill sets; this mentality further grounded by the fact that Thompson and O’Connor’s script allows them to make plenty of mistakes within their execution too. The intentions of certain characters and their eventual reveals may or may not be easily telegraphed, but there’s such a kinetic energy to proceedings that the film, overall, hits more than it misses, which, in a film that’s selling itself as Dave Bautista actioner, is alarmingly refreshing.
On the mention of Bautista, we know he’s a performer who is ultimately above these types of pictures, but that confidence only assists Trap House in feeling more pedigree than it is. Really, the entire ensemble here elevate the action, helping the film believably land its more dramatic inclinations that, in the hands of a lesser cast, may not be as easily sold.
THREE STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Trap House is now screening theatres in the United States, before arriving to stream on Prime Video in Australia on December 31st, 2025.
