M. Night Shyamalan’s Serial Killer Concert Film Has Its First Trailer

Josh Hartnett in M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap.

Josh Hartnett in M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap.
Screenshot: Warner Bros.

M. Night Shyamalan is the king of the twist and, in the first trailer for his new movie Trap, the twist is right on the surface.

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Starring Josh Hartnett, Trap opens August 9. It follows a father and daughter who go to the concert of a popular pop star (played by the director’s daughter Saleka) when Dad notices something is wrong. There are a lot of police around. Too many, in fact. Soon, he finds out, the whole concert is a trap. From there, well, the trailer can show you. Check it out.

Yup. The twist this time around is that the main character, played by Josh Hartnett, is the serial killer this concert has been set up to capture. Which is interesting for a whole bunch of reasons. The main one is, does the film want us to see him get caught? Does it paint him as the villain he clearly is? Are we rooting against him? If so, how does that work? If not, what does that say about us and the film?

At CinemaCon last week, where Shyamalan first revealed the trailer, he said the initial idea for the film was to give audiences that beautiful, communal feeling of attending a concert. Everything else developed from there. So we’re very curious to see how this movie balances all of these threads.

We’ll find out sooner rather than later as Trap will be out August 9.


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