Trap
All actors and roles (10)
Short description
Cooper takes his teenage daughter to a sold-out arena show by pop star Lady Raven, hoping to give her a night she will remember. Once inside, he notices far more police and security than a concert would normally require. The event, it turns out, is a trap: authorities have sealed the building because they believe a wanted killer known as the Butcher is somewhere in the crowd. Much of the film unfolds inside the venue, as the performance continues and the net slowly closes.
M. Night Shyamalan wrote and directed Trap, his fourteenth film as director in release order, arriving after Knock at the Cabin and before Remain. Josh Hartnett plays Cooper, with Ariel Donoghue as his daughter Riley and Saleka Night Shyamalan as Lady Raven. Hayley Mills and Jonathan Langdon also appear. The production, from Warner Bros. Pictures and Blinding Edge Pictures, cost about 30 million dollars and earned roughly 84 million worldwide, a solid return on a modest budget.
Viewers are divided. On IMDb the film sits at 5.8 from around 163,000 votes, while on TMDB it holds 6.2 from about 3,000 votes, suggesting a warmer response among that audience. The critics' rating of 5.8 from 250 reviews lands close to the IMDb figure, leaving the film with a middling reception overall.
What's left behind the scenes
- When M. Night Shyamalan was looking for an actor for the lead role, he met with Josh Hartnett for lunch. When the conversation turned to family and it turned out that they both had three daughters, Shyamalan realized he had found his lead actor.
- Preparing for the role, Josh Hartnett didn't read newspapers, watch television, or go online, but instead studied psychopathy and read a book about serial killers.
- To film scenes where characters talk to each other, M. Night Shyamalan ordered cameras to be equipped with mirrors reflecting images from another mirror, so that the actors could see close-ups of each other.
- The songs in the film were performed as if at a real concert. Thousands of extras participated in the filming, who were not informed about the film but were given recordings of the songs so they could sing along. Josh Hartnett said that many extras comforted him, believing he was nervous, as they didn't know he was in character.
- M. Night Shyamalan self-finances his own films, so during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA actors' strike, work on the film continued with only a short interruption.
- According to M. Night Shyamalan, the plot of the film was inspired by a joint operation of the U.S. Marshals Service and the Washington, D.C. Police Department on December 15, 1985. As part of this operation, many letters were sent to recipients who were informed that they had won a lottery, with a ticket to an American football game between two popular teams as the prize (getting a ticket to the game was unrealistic). The operation ended with the arrest of 101 fugitives. This was one of the largest mass arrests in U.S. history.
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