Barely two months after “The Watchers” by his daughter Ishana Shyamalan, M. Night Shyamalan returns with his 16th film “Trap” in which Josh Hartnett plays the lead role. A breathtaking thriller to see at the cinema.
A year and a half after Knock at the Cabin, and barely two months after The Watchers, the first film by his daughter Ishana Shyamalan, which he produced, the prolific M. Night Shyamalan returns with Trap, his sixteenth feature film.
With Trap, he completely innovates by shooting a film from the villain's point of view and announcing it right from the launch of the trailer. A surprising fact for the king of the final twist.
Described by the filmmaker as “The Silence of the Lambs at the Taylor Swift concert,” Trap takes place during a concert by pop star Lady Raven, played by her other daughter Saleka Shyamalan. 30,000 spectators. 300 police officers. A killer. Cooper, a father and serial killer, finds himself trapped by the police in the middle of a concert. Will he escape?
Josh Hartnett as a serial killer: we believe it!
And it's Josh Hartnett, a leading actor of the 2000s, who plays the role of the serial killer nicknamed The Butcher. A surprising role for the man who played a hero in Pearl Harbor.
On the occasion of the promotion of the feature film, we were able to speak with the actor who confided in us : “M. Night felt that I could thrive in this movie and make the character someone that the audience wanted to follow. It's a pretty unusual movie. M. Night Shyamalan always does that. He takes a genre, which you think you know, he turns it around, and he gives you a new perspective. So you see the genre from a different point of view. It's the same thing. It's a thriller, almost a '90s thriller. You follow the movie from the villain's point of view, so we needed the audience to be with my character, and I think M. Night felt that the audience would follow me.”.
M. Night Shyamalan felt that the audience would follow me.
Because the originality of the film lies in the way the viewer is immersed in the story. From the start we follow Cooper and his daughter Riley (played by the brilliant Ariel Donoghue). A funny and charming father who accompanies his teenage daughter to the Lady Raven concert. Apart from the fact that he is played by a popular and appreciated actor from the 90s, the character is sympathetic at first glance. So much so that the viewer oscillates between wanting him to escape and getting caught for his atrocious crimes.
Warner BrosShyamalan's first serial killer film
M. Night Shyamalan precisely specifies on this subject, that he had wanted for a long time to make a film with a serial killer: “II love serial killer movies, and I've always wanted to make one. Thesilenceofthelambs is one of my favorite movies, and there are so many that I love. But it's been done so many times that I wanted to do it in a different way. I wanted something exciting and different and unexpected. And I came up with this story about a father at a concert. You sympathize with him, you find him charming, and before you know it, you're cheering him on. It seemed like a lot of fun.” He adds : “Josh is brilliant. I loved him in Black Mirror and, of course, in his role as Ernest Lawrence in Oppenheimer. He was the perfect actor for such an ambiguous role.”
In order to best prepare for his role, Josh Hartnett has also done a lot of research on serial killers. He explains: “This is a very unique serial killer. So I had to do a lot of research. Reading books, because you can't meet serial killers and ask them how they do what they do. So I read a lot of books about serial killers, but also about psychopathy in general, and then I created a really solid foundation of who he is on the inside. And then I layered on top of that all the sorts of artifices that make up the mask of his life, which is being a great father, a firefighter, a pillar of the community, a loving, doting husband, and a member of the bowling team. Obviously, this is someone you want to know. It could be your neighbor. It could be someone you know, who you don't suspect has this dark secret. And then, over the course of the movie, you're supposed to see the cracks…”
Warner BrosA device never seen before
The first part of the feature film takes place in a concert hall filled with hysterical fans. And shooting a film during a concert is not an easy thing. If from Josh Hartnett's point of view everything was well coordinated since the actor tells us: “The crew spent two months working, just like a real concert, doing all the lighting, choreography and costumes. Saleka (Shyamalan) had written these beautiful songs. Then they sent them to the extras who would be in the audience. Thousands of extras got the songs. Then they came to the night concert and had fun.”
It was a Herculean challenge.
The director for his part explains to us the titanic work that went into organizing this concert: “Cameras were recording the concert, projecting it on the giant screen, and meanwhile I was running the movie cameras to shoot the Josh and Ariel movie sequences. It was very satisfying, but it was a Herculean challenge. But that was kind of the most exciting part: we were shooting the thriller part of the movie, but there was a real concert going on at the same time. It created a lot of interesting chaos. It adds a certain charm..
Warner BrosWhen the audience is screaming because Saleka did a dance move, while the actors are trying to say the line, you have to adjust. Josh has to speak louder to assert himself or he has to stop and react to the emulation and say, “Hey, I have to leave my seat, I’ll be right back.” So it was really beautiful to see something very real happening over his shoulder.
Create a real concert
To make all this credible, it was therefore necessary to imagine a concert, songs, sets, stage outfits and choreographies. And it is Saleka Shyamalan who took care of it. The director's daughter wrote and choreographed 14 songs (including one entitled “Divine” recorded with Kid Cudi who also plays in the film) which she then sent to the many extras responsible for learning the songs before coming to the concert.
The young woman explains to us:“There was a lot to deal with. At first I was wondering how I was going to balance all of these things: writing the songs, creating the choreography, acting… I didn't know what to spend the most time on. There were so many aspects to consider. But once I got into it, it all fed off each other in a wonderful way. The music fed off my acting because it got me into the character. The character helped me perform the songs on stage and sing them. The dance helped me write the songs because I was inspired by watching the dancers move to the music,… So it was an incredible collaboration between all of the art forms, and that's what we wanted in this film, to bring all of these art forms together. In fact, the process of creating the film was also inspired in that way..”
Warner BrosShe then adds: “It was kind of crazy because there was so much to film, we treated it like a real concert. So when you see Josh's side or the audience's side, we're really playing for them on stage, and we're really into it so they're reacting to something real.
And then there were a lot of cameras rolling, the ones filming the concert, the one filming the stage to project on the giant screen behind me, and the film cameras. So my dad was running those cameras and the film camera simultaneously and making sure everything was working together. They all had to be running at the same time in one take. We don't edit the songs together, so everything had to come together in perfect timing for each scene.”
A titanic task for this feature film which is released in theaters this Wednesday, August 7.
A link with Ishana Shyamalan's The Watchers?
Shyamalan fans will therefore be delighted since after The Watchers (The Watchers in the original version), Ishana Shyamalan's first film produced by her father, released last June, here is Trap.
When we met Ishana Shyamalan we asked her if the two films were related. She remained rather vague in her answer. Here is the answer: the most attentive viewers will notice at the beginning of Trap, when the SWAT vans arrive at the concert hall, a billboard displaying the title The Watchers…
And as usual M. Night Shyamalan made a cameo in Trap.