Trap (2024 film)

Trap is a 2024 American thriller film produced, written, and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. The film stars Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue, Shyamalan's daughter Saleka Night, Hayley Mills, and Alison Pill. The film follows Cooper Abbott, a serial killer known as the Butcher, who attends a concert with his teenage daughter Riley, only to discover the event has been intercepted by police who have been tipped off that he would be present.

The film was shot in Canada in late 2023. It premiered in New York City on July 24, 2024, and was theatrically released in the United States by Warner Bros. Pictures on August 2, 2024. It received mixed reviews from critics and grossed $83 million on a $30 million budget.

Plot

Philadelphia firefighter Cooper Abbott takes his teenage daughter, Riley, to pop star Lady Raven's concert as a reward for her good grades. Noticing the unusually high police presence around the concert venue, Cooper learns from a vendor named Jamie that the FBI has learned a serial killer named "the Butcher" will be in attendance. Cooper, who is revealed to be the Butcher, secretly checks footage on his phone of his latest captive victim, Spencer, whom he is holding in a basement. He steals Jamie's ID card and learns the passphrase that will identify him as an employee, using the card to gain access to a back room and steal a police radio.

Hearing a woman predicting his movements over the radio, Cooper sets off an explosion in a food stand's kitchen and uses the chaos to access the roof, where he learns from a police officer that the manhunt is led by Dr. Josephine Grant, an FBI profiler. Confused by Cooper's behavior, Riley asks him to stay with her. She says she hopes to be chosen as Lady Raven's "Dreamer Girl", who gets to dance on stage with the singer and receives backstage access. Believing the backstage exit is not covered by the police, Cooper meets Lady Raven's uncle, one of the spotters, and lies to him that Riley recently recovered from leukemia, leading to her selection as the "Dreamer Girl”.

After the concert ends, Cooper learns that the police are also guarding the backstage exit. He privately reveals himself as the Butcher to Lady Raven, threatening to kill Spencer remotely if she does not escort him and Riley out in her limousine. She complies but asks to come to Riley's house, where she stalls for time by explaining the FBI operation to the family, unsettling Cooper by describing Grant's profile of him as someone with maternal issues and obsessive–compulsive disorder. She also explains that the police discovered details about the Butcher's attendance at the concert via a torn ticket receipt left in a vacant house that was reported anonymously.

Lady Raven steals Cooper's phone and locks herself in the bathroom. She obtains details from Spencer about where he was taken and livestreams it to her fans, one of whom finds and rescues him. She reveals Cooper's identity as the Butcher to his wife Rachel, and he locks his family upstairs while Lady Raven texts her driver to contact the police. Cooper attempts to drive off with Lady Raven, but Cooper's family escapes and distracts him long enough for her to flee into her limousine. The police arrive and Cooper flees the house through a secret tunnel before disguising himself using a SWAT uniform and driving the limousine off with Lady Raven. After he reveals his identity, she unlocks the window and incites a mob of fans to swarm the car so the FBI can catch up. Cooper changes into a fresh set of civilian clothes and gets away.

Cooper returns home and confronts Rachel. Rachel confesses that she suspected he was the Butcher, left the receipt in the vacant house for the police to find, and reported it. Cooper decides to kill her and then himself, but Rachel persuades him to share some leftover pie she made for Riley. After Cooper expresses his rage at Rachel for causing him to miss seeing his children grow up, he realizes Rachel drugged the pie with pills from his tool bag, causing him to hallucinate his mother expressing pride in him for feeling a real emotion. He is captured by Grant and two SWAT officers as he walks up to her. As he is led away, he stops to adjust Riley's bicycle and shares a tearful embrace with her before being loaded into a police van. In the back of the van, Cooper unlocks his cuffs with a spoke he secretly took from Riley's bike and laughs to himself.

Later, Jamie is shocked to find out that Cooper was the Butcher while watching the news, after exclaiming that he had helped him. He vows not to talk to anyone at work anymore.

Cast

• Josh Hartnett as Cooper, a firefighter and Riley's father
• Ariel Donoghue as Riley, Cooper's daughter who is a fan of Lady Raven
• Saleka Night Shyamalan as Lady Raven, a famous singer whom Riley adores
• Alison Pill as Rachel, Cooper's wife and Riley and Logan's mother
• Hayley Mills as Dr. Josephine Grant, an FBI profiler
• Jonathan Langdon as Jamie, a vendor at the concert
• Mark Bacolcol as Spencer, a captive of the Butcher
• Marnie McPhail-Diamond as Jody's mom, the mother of one of Riley's former friends
• Scott Mescudi as the Thinker, a singer who performs with Lady Raven
• Russell "Russ" Vitale as Parker Wayne, a singer who performs with Lady Raven
• Marcia Bennett as Cooper's mom, who appears to him in various hallucinations
• Lochlan Miller as Logan, Cooper and Rachel's young son
• M. Night Shyamalan makes a cameo appearance as Lady Raven's uncle, her mother's brother, who works as a spotter at the concert

Production

Development and pre-production

In October 2022, Universal Pictures announced a then-untitled film from filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan. In February 2023, the film was revealed to be titled Trap when it changed distributor, as Shyamalan and his production company Blinding Edge Pictures entered a first-look deal with Warner Bros. Pictures. The film sprouted from conversations Shyamalan had with his daughter, singer-songwriter Saleka, about combining the concert and theatrical experience and devising an album for a narrative, similar to how Prince wrote the titular album for the 1984 musical film Purple Rain. Shyamalan initially planned to let another filmmaker write the script and direct the film from his original idea for a thriller set at a concert, before changing his mind after realizing he could make the film with Saleka.

The premise was inspired in part by Operation Flagship, a 1985 sting operation in which disguised law enforcement arrested 101 wanted fugitives at a convention center, having invited them under the pretense of gifting them free NFL tickets and an opportunity to win an all-expenses-paid trip to Super Bowl XX. Shyamalan pitched Trap as setting The Silence of the Lambs (1991) at a Taylor Swift concert, in reference to her Eras Tour, and wrote the screenplay in five-and-a-half months, a personal record for him. He produced the film with Marc Bienstock and Ashwin Rajan.

Saleka stars as singer Lady Raven, whose concert the characters attend. As her father was writing the script, she composed fourteen songs for the film, designed diegetically to match the action onscreen. Saleka previously collaborated with her father by making a single for the film Old (2021) and an EP for the series Servant. Shyamalan was inspired to incorporate musical elements by Purple Rain and visiting Saleka on tour. Saleka also noted Bollywood cinema, in which music often plays a key role in the storytelling, as an influence, and listed Adele, Billie Eilish, Rihanna, Rosalía, and Taylor Swift as inspirations for her performance. She described Trap as a "Shyamalan American version of a Bollywood movie that is grounded and the songs make sense — not necessarily a musical, but completely music-centric."

As with his recent, self-funded projects, Shyamalan and a storyboard artist storyboarded the film and held extensive rehearsals with the actors. Shyamalan originally intended to frame the film in a 4:3 aspect ratio, but after a discussion with cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, they agreed it limited their ability to shoot the movie and was "too much work" to create a feeling of claustrophobia. They changed it to a 1.85:1 aspect ratio, and the film was re-storyboarded. Josh Hartnett did not watch any media in preparation for the role of "Cooper" to make the character his own and researched psychopathy, including books about serial killers. Shyamalan wrote Hayley Mills's investigator character as a "maternal figure" to contrast Cooper's lack of empathy. Ariel Donoghue, who plays Cooper's daughter Riley, attended school in between filming.

Filming and post-production

Principal photography was originally scheduled to begin in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA in August 2023, where it would have received over $9 million in tax credits from the state to film there. Production relocated to Toronto, Ontario, and was granted an interim agreement on September 18, 2023, to film during the SAG-AFTRA strike. Under the working title Good Grades, filming was scheduled to occur from October 16 to December 8, 2023. The film's pop concert venue, known as "Tanaka Arena", was filmed in Hamilton, Ontario, inside TD Coliseum, a 20,000-seat arena that the production obtained access to for two to three months because it was undergoing renovations. Toronto's Rogers Centre stood in as the venue's exterior.