Trailer for M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap Promises Old School Thrills

Movies

M. Night Shyamalan is going old school with his next movie. Warner Bros. has released a trailer for Trap, the next film the director of The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and some things that aren’t nearly as good as those. Trap takes place at a concert for a teenybopper pop star, where a dad attending with his daughter discovers that the event is a trap the FBI has set to catch a serial killer – who happens to be the dad. Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue, Allison Pill, Saleka Shyamalan (daughter of the director), and Hayley Mills star in the film, which is also written by Shyamalan (M. Night, not Saleka). Trap will arrive in theaters on August 9, 2024, and you can see the trailer below:

Trap looks great. This is the kind of movie it feels like they never (or rarely) make anymore: a thriller. No frills, no superpowers, no horror angle, just a straight-up suspenseful thriller with an interesting concept and a good actor at the center of it. I like Josh Hartnett; I always thought he was a better actor than he was given credit for being, and I felt bad that he never quite took off. The idea of making the killer the central character puts a neat spin on the premise; he’s undoubtedly the most interesting person to follow, as he’s the one who will have to overcome daunting odds and outwit an army of heavily armed and well-trained enemies. If it’s played right, this movie could really test your morality and reveal what drama and perception can do for it. I wonder if the idiots who said Joker turned a psychopath into a hero will have similar problems with Trap. I balked a bit when I saw that Shyamalan had cast his daughter in the movie, but I looked her up, and she’s an actual pop singer in real life. Part of me wonders if he wrote this movie for her, but if it turns out well, it doesn’t matter. It’s also cool that he cast Hayley Mills, who was in the very early seasons of Saved by the Bell (back when it was called Good Morning, Miss Bliss; it was later revamped, with the setting change from the Midwest to L.A. and Zack Morris becoming the lead). Mills also used to star in Disney movies when she was younger, like In Search of the Castaways and The Parent Trap. I can’t imagine Trap has a big budget, so I hope it’s able to eke out a nice profit; this is the kind of movie Hollywood should be making now that it’s losing tons of money on big blockbusters.