I admit I’m slightly late to the party (or concert) discussing the massively popular trailer for M. Night Shyamalan’s latest psychological thriller, Trap, but the Deadpool & Wolverine trailer dropped last Monday and there was simply no way I was going to miss covering that. However, this doesn’t mean that Trap doesn’t warrant further discussion, even almost two weeks after it dropped.
This is because Shyamalan, who is best known for the major twists in his films, delivered what can only be described as a meta-trailer, as there was a twist in the trailer that no one – myself included – initially saw coming.
The trailer starts innocently enough, as a seemingly attentive, happy-go-lucky dad, played by Josh Harnett, takes his daughter to see the pop star Lady Raven (played by Shyamalan’s musician daughter Saleka, no less), who draws fanfare reminiscent of Taylor Swift. The tone of the trailer early on is decidedly upbeat, playing out almost like an Oscar-baiting drama, but things begin to take an unexpected turn when the dad, going to use the washroom, notices a heavy security presence, with new cameras being placed around the venue. After putting his charm to use, the dad convinces a concert worker to tell him what’s going on, only to discover that the concert is a trap to lure an active serial killer named “The Butcher”, which we discover is actually Harnett’s character, as he consequently spies his latest victim through an app on his phone, still alive but pleading for help. Gasp!
The movie certainly shows promise just going off the trailer, not to mention that significant portions of the film, namely the interior and exterior shots of the music venue, were actually filmed at the Rogers Centre in Toronto, and Hamilton’s FirstOntario Centre. Yet, there is almost certainly no way that this the sole major twist to Trap.
As mentioned, Shyamalan’s entire schtick, so to speak, is the use of the plot twist, which in his more than twenty years of filmmaking have either been a homerun, such as The Sixth Sense and The Visit, or a laughable disaster, à la The Lady in the Water or The Happening. Yet, Shyamalan seemingly gives up the “big twist” in the film’s trailer, while hinting that the movie is essentially one big game of cat and mouse between Hartnett’s serial killer dad and the authorities. This simply does not gel with Shyamalan as a filmmaker. His films, for better or for worse, are never that straightforward, and I’m more than willing to go out on a limb and say there is more to this movie than meets the eye.
Take the intermittent title cards following the trailer’s big twist, where it collectively says, “GET READY FOR A NEW EXPERIENCE IN THE WORLD OF M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN”. Notice that they infer the “WORLD” of Shyamalan, hinting that this film could be taking place in another of his films. Remember, this has already happened, as a bombshell final scene connected 2016’s Split with his 2000 superhero flick Unbreakable, the latter of which is rightfully considered by many to be ahead of its time. Shyamalan concluded this trilogy with 2019’s Glass, and especially given Bruce Willis’ recent retirement from acting due to aphasia (though, sadly, he has since been diagnosed with dementia). As such, it’s unlikely that Shyamalan will be expanding upon this particular universe he has created, though there is a good chance that Trap is in fact connected to another Bruce Willis-led feature from Shyamalan, the very movie that put him on the map: The Sixth Sense.
It’s certainly an overwhelming task to even try outdoing the masterfully handled twist of The Sixth Sense, a moment which has become a pop culture staple in and of itself, yet the twist to Trap might be that this is a sequel to that very movie, and the more I consider it, the more convinced I am that this is the case.
Think about it; how do the authorities know Hartnett’s The Butcher is even there? Clearly, he’s a calculated, exacting serial killer who makes few mistakes, if any, which is at least one good reason why the police would go to such unusual lengths as to set up a whole concert just to catch him. That still doesn’t answer the central question of how they know in the first place, though Haley Joel Osment’s character Cole Sear, a young boy who could see and speak with the dead in The Sixth Sense (and earned Osment an Oscar nomination), provides an overtly obvious answer to this question, as it would make sense that he continued helping catch the killers of the dead who seek him out. Suddenly, this game of cat and mouse just became a whole lot more interesting.
Of course, there’s always the chance that this is not the case, and we are in for some other kind of twist that could go either way if Shyamalan’s history is anything to go by. Even Hartnett himself has described Trap as “very bizarre, very dark, and it’s wild”, so there may be much more to the premise than we initially assume. Whatever these case, we’ll find out the true twist in Trap once it releases on August 14th.