This article contains spoilers for three films. Read at your own risk.

We’re back for the second part of our summer watchlist cross talk! In this part, we’ll be covering “Twisters” (2024), a belated sequel to the 1996 action classic “Twister,” the 2022 romantic comedy “Fire Island” (2022), and blockbuster psychological thriller “Trap” (2024). These movies offered a wide range of storytelling tropes and cinematic styles, but it’s safe to say that each was a blast to watch! In this article, we invited Executive Editor Sam Hilton ’25 and former Distribution Manager Drew Weddig ’24 to join us in discussing “Fire Island” and “Trap,” which they watched with us. 

Keeping consistent with the format of our last cross talk, we analyze each movie using “rose, thorn, and buffalo.” This means that we’ll each share something we enjoyed, something we disliked, and something we found to be just downright weird. Enjoy!

“Twisters”

SB: Starting with “Twisters,” my rose was how predictable this movie was. Nothing unexpected happened the entire time and it made me so happy. It was such an easy watch. 

KS: My rose was the soundtrack, but the problem is that I can’t really remember the soundtrack that well.

SB: There’s a great song on the soundtrack where the refrain of the chorus is “You can’t take the home out of Oklahoma.” I think about that every day.

KS: My biggest thorn in this movie is that it can’t be a love story, because the main characters don’t kiss at the end. It defies all rom-com expectations. 

SB: As someone who has an overactive [X, formerly known as Twitter,] presence, this was a problem that a lot of people had with the movie. They didn’t kiss at the end, but they were constantly teasing a kiss. What I think is funny about that is every time it seemed like they were gonna kiss, Anthony Ramos’ character (Javi) was just standing there. And that’s why they never kissed—because he was just standing there. 

KS: They were forcing him to watch what happens when you fumble a woman, because he fumbled Jasmine Cephas Jones so hard.

SB: And I still haven’t forgiven him.

KS: No, me neither.

SB: I distinctly did not enjoy his presence in the movie for that reason. We stand with Jasmine Cephas Jones.

KS: My other huge thorn is how long the movie was.

SB: Agreed! One of my thorns was Daisy Edgar Jones as the main character, Kate. I know that I’m gonna get murdered for this. “Normal People” (2020) stans, don’t come for me. People have really hyped her up in the last few years and she was pretty underwhelming in this. She had very little chemistry with Glen Powell (Tyler), which is hard to do. She just did not do it for me. Sorry you guys.

KS: I think that’s fair. She also was not the standout of this movie to me, clearly, because it was Kiernan Shipka.

My buffalo is the post-credits scene. It was like one minute long and nothing worthy of a post-credits scene happened.

SB: My buffalo is that Tyler’s truck is tricked out with extra stuff because he’s a tornado chaser. So, his truck is able to ground itself, like literally drill holes into the ground so that the truck won’t get sucked up by tornadoes when he’s chasing. At the end of the movie, Tyler takes Kate to the airport and they don’t kiss and then, Javi is like, “Go get her, man.” So Tyler decides to go get her, except a parking attendant at the airport is like, “Dude, you have to move your truck.” And his response to this is to turn on the feature of his truck that drills it into the ground. So he just ends up destroying government property for no reason. He could have easily had Javi move his truck. He didn’t have to do that.

KS: I struggle to believe that his truck has the ability to drill into cement. I get that it can drill into dirt in a random field where they’re chasing a tornado, but the idea that it could drill straight into the road is a little bit suspicious.

I think that my closing statement would be about the random British reporter who’s just really interested in American culture.

SB: I love that he’s an extremely minor character, but they make a point of showing how he assimilates into the group of tornado chasers. It’s really sweet. He has a little cowboy hat on at the end.

“Fire Island”

KS: Drew and I stumbled across “Fire Island” because we were looking for a movie to watch and I was in the mood to watch something silly goofy. 

Drew Weddig: I feel like it gave the same vibes as “Generation,” (2021) which I think is one of the most underrated TV shows. It’s about young people living their lives and it’s camp. It’s maybe a little bit playing into stereotypes, but it’s such a feel-good show.

It’s such a breath of fresh air considering most media that’s centered around minorities are usually about how oppressed they are. They’re very sad. 

KS: I think that could be my rose. I’m so happy that we can have a really bad rom-com about gay Asian people. The movie really spoke to me.

Sam Hilton: I think my rose is very similar. My rose is that it wasn’t a coming out movie. Until the last three years, 90% of queer media has been centered around coming out or being bullied for being gay. It was fun to see gay people in a community having fun.

SB: I think my rose might be Margaret Cho’s character (Erin). She owns the house that the main friend group is staying in on Fire Island and she doesn’t do anything important the whole time. She just hangs out and then they find out that she’s mismanaged the small fortune she was using to maintain the house, so they’re gonna lose the house. So actually, when you think about it, she’s the problem. But she’s just such a good time. 

DW: I think my rose is similar to Kat’s, in that I’m just so happy that Asian people are at the center of the plot. 

KS: Portrayals of Asian sexuality in the media are so often just “Asians are sexless” or on the other side, “Asians are fetishized.” There’s not that many portrayals that are actually true to how Asian sexuality exists in the real world. 

SB: I also think that, even in movies that focus around characters of color, it always feels like they’re trying so hard to include a central white character. This movie didn’t do that. It wasn’t measuring any sort of racial experience with whiteness as the center of it. 

SH: Wealth was more of a conflict between characters.

DW: Well, that’s like a perfect segue to my thorn of the film, which is the entire character of Will [Conrad Ricamora]. He’s just a rich dude who’s drinking only plastic water bottles and flaunting his richness. I feel like the movie gives him a 100% redemption by the end of the movie when he really doesn’t deserve that. 

SH: My thorn of the movie is [that] I had the same problem with this movie that I had with the hit television series, “The Real Friends of WeHo” (2023). In the opening scene of “The Real Friends of WeHo,” it’s established that West Hollywood is the center of gay culture in America. It felt like this movie was trying to do a similar thing with Fire Island. But only a very specific set of gay people go to Fire Island, (P-Town), WeHo, and other places like that. 

I know that I shouldn’t expect all media that involves an aspect of my identity to be completely representative of my experience with that identity, but it was just entirely separated from my experience.

KS: My thorn is the scene where Noah [Joel Kim Booster] loses his phone because that other random character knocks it out of his hand and it goes flying into the pool. That’s such a kitschy rom-com moment. Of course, he’s gonna lose his phone because he gets knocked into the pool in this over-exaggerated way. But that struck me as too much. 

SB: My thorn is that I don’t understand what motivated any of the character actions in the movie. It was fun watching them and they were great actors, but it was never clear what they were trying to accomplish. I know the whole thing was that Bowen Yang’s character needed to get laid and I’m really happy they accomplished that. But besides that one thing, they would show up at a party and I didn’t really know why they were there. 

KS: My buffalo is when Charlie [James Scully] is doing his big rom-com moment, and the other characters are like, “You need to go bigger!” And he goes, “I love you!” And then they’re like, “Oh no.” That was a great moment in that movie. 

DW: I think my buffalo is probably the scene with the plastic water bottle. I think about that so much. It’s meant to be there as your first realization that Will isn’t all bad. But it’s so stupid. 

SH: My Buffalo is the whole arc with Dex [Zane Philips]. He’s the OnlyFans guy who illegally films himself having sex with people and posts it online. I think he only existed so that Will could be like, “Hey punk, I’m gonna sue you. Delete this now.” And then he did and then he dropped his phone in the pool, which just felt random to me. That plot line went away pretty fast. It got really lost.

SB: Can I have a bonus rose? Bowen Yang. 

KS: That’s great.

“Trap”

SB: Finally, we’re going to talk about “Trap.” This was the most fun I’ve had watching a movie in a long time. 

SH: Kat, Drew and I watched it [at Metro Movies 12] in a theater with about six other people. Halfway through the movie, everyone [in the audience] was making color commentary. It started with a person behind us saying [loudly], “Oh, this is a bad movie.”

DW: Then everybody laughed, so he just kept going. We loved it.

KS: What were your roses in this movie?

SH: I loved Josh Hartnett as [the main character,] Cooper. His acting was a rose for me because it was the worst acting that I’ve seen in so long. 

SB: My rose was that the premise [of the movie] is that the FBI is setting a trap for a serial killer inside of this concert venue, but only about a third of the movie happens at the concert venue. Most of the plot happens after the serial killer leaves [the concert] and every minute of it is astounding.

KS: I’m trying to think of something that I genuinely enjoyed and didn’t just enjoy in an ironic way. I think my rose is the post-credits scene. For context, one of the employees at the concert tells Cooper that the concert’s a trap for a serial killer [which the audience knows is Cooper] and gives him useful information that helps him escape. Then they show that same character at the end, finding out that Cooper was the serial killer and then freaking out. 

Now, we can move on to the thorns of this movie, of which there are many.

SH: I know what my biggest thorn was. I know that M. Night Shyamalan loves a plot twist, [but] it felt like 10 too many times for them to pull the “We got him! Just kidding.” The last time he should’ve escaped should have been when he kidnapped Lady Raven and he drove away with her. And then they should have caught him. Because what do you mean he got out of the car and [the police] didn’t notice?

SB: I think the entire Lady Raven sequence was my thorn. What do you mean an international pop sensation just drove to this random family’s house and hung out with them for a while? I think it’s ridiculous that she didn’t alert the authorities at any point about this confirmed serial killer. It’s so bad. The first part of the movie when they’re in the concert venue is bad, but the moment when I realized that the writing had really devolved was in the Lady Raven portion.

DW: As far as my thorn goes, I hated how unrealistic all the dialogue was between Cooper and his daughter, Riley. It felt like a conversation between a father and a daughter in a beginner Spanish textbook. 

KS: It’s hard for me to come up with a thorn because the things that I disliked about the movie I actually did like because they were camp. I can say a buffalo, which is Lady Raven’s music. I thought that they did a really good job at AI-generating some pop songs for the movie. I thought they sounded like real pop songs that teenage girls would enjoy.

SB: I’m going to stop you right there because they weren’t AI-generated. Both music and lyrics [for all the songs] were written and performed by the person playing Lady Raven, Saleka, M. Night Shyamalan’s daughter. 

KS: Is she actually an aspiring pop star?

SB: Yep. Nepo[tism] baby queen. She’s killing it.

KS: I really enjoyed her work.

SH: My buffalo is the entire trap plan. Firstly, [the FBI] decided to [pull suspects out of line] while people were leaving [the concert,] when it would have been much easier to check people when they were coming in. Secondly, I fear for any other emergency that was happening in Philadelphia that day because the entire police force, the FBI, everybody was there for one guy. I know he’s a violent serial killer, but there are 20,000 people in the arena. He can’t kill everybody. 

SB: My buffalo was the scene where Cooper is talking to his wife, and he takes his shirt off. [The four of us] have been discussing this movie for a week and we cannot figure out why his shirt came off. It could have been to avoid getting blood on his shirt, but he kept his pants on.

DW: My buffalo is the character that was supposed to be the super genius serial killer catcher woman because she did nothing. She’s introduced as this person who will catch every serial killer. She’s the best in the game, but then she fails for two and a half hours of this movie. 

SB: What an absolute shitshow of a movie! I had a great time. Any final thoughts before we wrap this up?

SH: I would recommend “Trap.”

KS: Agreed! One might even say that M. Night Shyamalan has his touch back. 

SH: One would be wrong.

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

Sam Hilton contributed to reporting and can be reached at shilton@wesleyan.edu. 

Drew Weddig contributed to reporting can be reached at dweddig@wesleyan.edu. 

Sulan Bailey can be reached at sabailey@wesleyan.edu.

Kat Struhar can be reached at kstruhar@wesleyan.edu.