Whether you like him or hate him, you can’t ignore M. Night Shyamalan. Yeah, it’s certainly a cliched thing to say, but wouldn’t you agree that this man is a force of nature? Naturally, everything he does, good or bad, automatically becomes an event. Of course, his bad outweighs the good in recent times, but his latest, Trap, did seem like a winner ever since the trailer dropped. The whole premise of a concert masquerading as a trap for a serial killer is cool as hell, even if it sounds quite ludicrous. Shyamalan is famous for coming up with ideas like this, and in Trap, he has almost pulled it off. The first half is so good that it almost makes you forget all the terrible things he’s been putting out for the past decade or so. But then the inevitable happens, and we end up in Shyama-land, and from there on, it keeps going down the drain. Strangely enough, the second half almost feels like watching a whole other Shyamalan movie. Trap‘s ending is exactly the kind of thing you’d expect from its director, and we’re going to talk about that in this article.
Spoilers Ahead
What Happens in the Movie?
Wouldn’t you agree if I said Trap had the best trailer of the year? A sociopathic serial killer getting trapped inside a pop star’s concert, which he’s attending with his teenage daughter; eventually realizing he’s being specifically hunted by the law is a bonkers concept. But Shyamalan is skilled enough to pull it off quite fantastically. And it works as long as the film is confined inside the concert arena. Any other director probably would have finished the film there only, but Shyamalan has to take us outside, to the home of this killer, and what follows after is something that can only happen in M. Night’s world.
So we have Cooper (played by Josh Hartnett in his career-best effort), who seems like the “world’s greatest dad,” taking his daughter Riley to this Lady Raven concert in the opening scene of the film. Lady Raven is the Taylor Swift equivalent here, and Shyamalan has home-grown talent (his daughter Saleka, the popular R&B musician) playing the part. Riley is over the moon after finding out their seats are extremely close to the stage, thanks to her father. Cooper is initially chill, all happy and fun, but slowly he starts to notice there’s a bit too much security at this concert. It would have been fun if we hadn’t seen the trailer of the film, but since we have already, we know why Cooper is jittery. He may be the loving dad of Riley, but he’s also a serial killer after all. As the concert progresses, we see armed policemen lining up outside, surrounding the entire premises, so that nobody can get out. With each passing minute, Cooper grows more and more tense. He finally gets to know what’s really going on from this shirt-seller, Jaimie, who has only one shirt left, and when Cooper tells Riley to give that away to the girl who was standing there before them, Jaimie feels bad for them. He assures Cooper that there are more t-shirts and he should come back in ten minutes to get one. Cooper is smart enough to use this opportunity to get the information out of Jaimie, who lets him know what’s going on exactly. It also turns out that Jaimie is obsessed with this serial killer, conveniently called “Butcher.” Anyway, now that he knows, Cooper has to find a way out of here. Thanks to Cooper checking his phone once, we also find out that he has a young man chained up in an unspecified location. Typical serial killer business, what else?
Does Cooper Get Out Of The Concert?
It’s not easy being a serial killer when you’re a girl dad (or maybe the other way around)! Once Cooper realizes what’s happening, his initial plan of getting away is a very obvious one: creating some kind of distraction. He stealthily pushes a random teenager down the stairs, causes one hell of an accident at the fries counter where an unfortunate employee gets horribly burned, and also manages to find out the secret code the arena employees have been given by the police. But nothing seems to actually work out for him. The arrival of FBI profiler Dr. Josephine Grant (played by celebrated British actress Hayley Mills) on the scene makes it even more difficult for him. He now knows that the distraction tactic is not going to work. So what does he do instead? Well, he finds Shyamalan, who’s cameoing as Lady Raven’s uncle/spotter. For the “Dreamer Girl” song, Lady Raven’s going to pick a teenage girl from the audience to perform with her onstage. The lucky girl’s going to get to chill with her after the show and get access to the backstage. And backstage is the only place where there’s not going to be much checking, which is going to be the perfect opportunity for Cooper to get away—if he manages to make it there, of course. So he charms Uncle Shyam by telling him that his daughter has leukemia, which prompts the spotter to take the father and daughter backstage. Riley was concerned about her usually awesome father acting weird, but now she’s forgotten all of that as she gets to live her dream. There’s a subplot going on here: Riley had a beef with her best friend Jody, also a Ravenhead, who’s also at the concert. Jody’s mom is hellbent on convincing Cooper that the girls should be friends again. All this is very fun to watch, and thanks to Hartnett’s performance, at times you wish that the guy gets away. He’s just a sweet serial killer, after all!
And your wish does come true, but not how you’d imagine! Lady Raven (and Riley) sets the stage on fire with “Dreamer Girl,” making Jody and her mother burn with jealousy. Cooper is a hit backstage as well, thanks to him helping out a backup dancer who fainted. Our man just happens to work in the fire department as well. When the show’s done, Cooper and Riley wait for a personal meet and greet with Lady Raven. We get a Kid Cudy cameo, while we wonder why on earth there hasn’t been an interval block yet! Just when you’re thinking Cooper might actually escape after all, Dr. Grant appears backstage, effectively ensuring that everyone there is carefully vetted before they leave, especially the white males in their late thirties/early forties. That pretty much leaves Cooper with no other option but to pull off a hasty move—revealing his real identity to Lady Raven herself, threatening to kill the captive (remember the man we saw in Cooper’s phone earlier?) if she doesn’t comply. All Lady Raven has to do is let Cooper and Riley into her limousine and drop them outside. And so it happens. Cooper, our serial killer, gets away with his daughter, sitting pretty inside Lady Raven’s own limousine. But this is no ordinary thriller; it’s a Shyamalan movie that can’t end just like that.
Who is Rachel?
Joke’s on you if you thought Cooper is a single dad! It turns out he has a wife and a son as well, who’re at home, while the father and daughter are at the concert. Rachel is Cooper’s wife, the nicest possible person you could meet. Alison Pill (who has been in everything from The Newsroom to American Horror Story to Devs) plays the part, and she’s very convincing—even though the whole third act, including her character, is tacked on. But Shyamalan’s not going to let you leave without overstuffing you and making you see his daughter act. So Lady Raven pulls off a stunt on Cooper, asking if she could visit their house. She knows very well how happy Riley’s going to be, and her loving dad wouldn’t be able to turn down the request. Cooper tries to throw her off by hinting at what he’s willing to do (by violently shaking his phone), but Lady Raven seems to be unbothered by it. So we reach Cooper’s home and meet Rachel and Logan, who are more than happy to welcome the pop star.
What Is Lady Raven’s Plan?
Before we get into that, I thought it was rather impressive of Shyamalan to cast Saleka as Lady Raven, who composed and sang original songs for the concert. This brings authenticity to the table, something that we love to see. If only Trap started and ended inside the concert arena! Would it really matter if Lady Raven just dropped Cooper and Riley off where they parked their car and went away? Sure, it would have been anticlimactic and not at all Shyamalan-like, but Trap would have ended up a better movie!
Sadly, that’s not the case. And we have to endure a very Shyamalan-esque final half hour, which goes on and on, and you’re unsure how and when he’s going to stop. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration if I said I started to feel trapped inside the theater at this point! Anyway, at Cooper’s house, Lady Raven settles into the couch, and Rachel serves the pie she made to celebrate Riley’s good grades. Cooper can’t wait for the celebrity to leave, but Lady Raven has other plans. She wants to play the piano and sing a song with Riley. How can anyone say no to such an awesome idea? I’m sure some of us thought Lady Raven would try to tell Rachel what’s happening through her song, but thankfully, that doesn’t happen. Cooper takes a cute video of Riley singing with such a big star in their own drawing room. But he was clearly not prepared for Lady Raven’s next move. Wanting to click a selfie (another grand idea), she looks for her phone (which she carefully hid before even starting the song) and snatches away Cooper’s, leaving him dumbfounded for a moment. By the time he realizes what has happened, Lady Raven is inside the bathroom, with both her and Cooper’s phones. I would say Cooper should have had better security on his phone given his unusual hobby, but since the narrative has to move forward, Lady Raven manages to contact the captive. It’s a young man named Spencer, who’s unsure where he is, other than there possibly being a lion statue somewhere nearby. Utilizing her power as a celebrity, Lady Raven does an Instagram Live, requesting her followers to save the man who doesn’t have much time. That works out eventually, as we see the man, finally free but still traumatized, later in the movie. But before that, Lady Raven has to find a way out of Cooper’s house, and she can’t do that without facing him. When she finally opens the bathroom door, she meets a very angry, agitated Cooper. There’s no Rachel and the kids in sight. Cooper takes Lady Raven to their garage and makes her get inside Rachel’s car. But just when they’re about to leave, Lady Raven taps into his mommy issues, which allows her to get out of the car. Thanks to Lady Raven alerting her limousine driver, Jeremiah, police are already on the scene. But they fail to arrest Cooper as he gets away through a secret tunnel inside the house. It’s a serial killer’s house after all.
Does Cooper Finally Get Caught?
Not only does Cooper escape from his own house, completely surrounded; he also manages to get police gear and pose as Lady Raven’s limousine driver. By the time Lady Raven finds out about this “epic twist,” she’s in handcuffs. Cooper has one upped her here for certain. But Lady Raven gets lucky as soon as the car gets caught up in bad traffic, and she succeeds in uncuffing herself and getting out. The moment that happens, the whole police force arrives, and they’re about to put the limousine driver in handcuffs. But Shyamalan clearly doesn’t want to end things here, so Cooper still manages to get away.
I admit I did think about how the police knew Cooper would be at the concert in the first place, but I’m not sure if I really wanted an answer. However, Shyamalan clearly set out intending to clear all doubts, so he tells us that it was Rachel. She did suspect her greenflag of a husband of being involved in something. The first thought was an affair, but after getting a strong smell of bleach from his clothes (not how firefighters usually smell), she concluded it might just be the other thing. She even followed him to one of his secret houses, although she didn’t find anything. But Rachel was smart enough to tip off the police about the possibility of famous serial killer “The Butcher” being present at the Lady Raven concert. After all this, how can Mr. Shyamalan leave us without giving us a confrontation scene between Cooper and Rachel?
Cooper is now mad at his wife and about to chop her up, then kill himself, but Rachel has one last wish: that they finish off what’s left of the pie, like normal people. It was made for Riley after all. A smart serial killer would have figured out this was also a trap (even I did), but not Cooper. So Rachel has no problem dosing him with sleeping pills mixed in the pie. This finally leads to Dr. Grant and the police arriving at their house again, tasering Cooper, and putting the handcuffs on him. A shirtless Cooper attacking a bunch of policemen was completely unnecessary, to say the least, but I’m sure Hartnett had a lot of fun doing it. So anyway, Cooper does two more things going away: giving a tight hug to Riley, who’s shell-shocked given how the day has turned out. The other thing he does is pick up Riley’s bike, which was lying on the lawn in front of the house, and make it stand. Is that a last good gesture by a faulty father before going away forever? Not quite, as we soon find out his real motive—using a spoke to uncuff himself. He’s still inside the FBI prison transport, but the way he laughs like a maniac, it’s quite evident that he’s not going to face justice anytime soon
Will There Be A Sequel or Prequel?
Anything is possible, as it is M. Night Shyamalan, but considering Cooper is still not properly caught, a sequel seems legitimate enough here. Whether Shyamalan makes one or not probably depends on the kind of business Trap does. I personally wouldn’t mind seeing Hartnett going full crazy, giving Nicolas Longlegs Cage a run for his funny, just saying! Alternatively, we might also get a Cooper origin story that dives deep into the mommy issues (that was not random, right?) and we also see how he does his things while balancing family life. This is just speculation, obviously, and for now, I’m going to leave y’all here. I’m sure Shyamalan has already cooked up his next movie inside his head, and I’m sure we can’t wait to see it.
