M. Night Shyamalan is coming this summer with a new film led by Josh Hartnett, and we have already declared ourselves ready for the Hartnettaissance, but the second trailer for Trap is so good, I’m also just ready for a good movie from Shyamalan. He’s an up-and-down director, but his last few films (Knock at the Cabin, Old, Glass) have been more down than not. I think 2016’s Split was the last Shyamalan film I enjoyed unreservedly. But Trap looks great, not least because Josh Hartnett looks great in it.
Talking to Empire, Shyamalan says his pitch on the film was “What if Silence of the Lambs happened at a Taylor Swift concert”, and that he was partly inspired by Operation Flagship, an 80s-era sting operation in which law enforcement drew out fugitives by offering tickets to a football game. Some of the officers were dressed as mascots, which I don’t think needs to be an entire movie, but it DOES sound like the premise of a Tim Robinson sketch. Just a cop in a fur suit, sweating his ass off, trying to arrest some bail jumper who’s wanted for like, failure to pay child support. Just the saddest moment in everyone’s life, made surreal by the fur suit.
Anyway, Trap looks great, even if it is part two of the Shyamalan nepo baby summer. Ishana Night Shyamalan’s film, The Watchers, didn’t make much of an impression on anyone earlier this summer, with middling reviews and box office, though some critics did note that Ishana Shyamalan shows some promise—it’s only her first feature, after all. Artists have to be allowed to grow. Now it’s Saleka’s turn, performing as pop star “Lady Raven” in Trap. Again talking to Empire, Shyamalan calls the Lady Raven concert “literally a real concert”, as cinema is “windows within windows”.
So Trap is a concert film with a thriller unfolding within it. I can see why he reduced it to “Silence of the Lambs at the Eras Tour” to sell it, it’s a catchy pitch, but the technical demand of directing a good concert film is high, as if he didn’t already have enough going on with the thriller part. Shyamalan’s scripts don’t always work for me, but he is an excellent director of mystery/thrillers, and I’m curious to see how that translates to directing a concert film, though I remain mystified at everyone taking the trailers at face value and talking about this movie like there won’t be a plot twist. There’s no way it’s as straightforward as “the dad is the killer”.
Lainey and I were messaging about Trap last night, and she said her go-to Josh Hartnett movie is 40 Days and 40 Nights. Mine is either The Faculty or Lucky Number Slevin, depending on mood. What’s your go-to Hartnett?
