WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS ahead for Trap.
Summary
- Saleka shines as Lady Raven in Trap with original music and a major role, adding to the film’s unique atmosphere.
- Josh Hartnett’s Cooper pulls off daring escapes and deception, adding suspense to Trap’s thrilling storyline.
- Trap’s mixed reviews haven’t stopped it from meeting box office expectations, setting the stage for potential success.
Cooper has plenty of tricks up his sleeve in M. Night Shyamalan’s latest horror thriller movie Trap. Josh Hartnett stars as a serial killer disguised as a supportive father in Trap, which also features the feature film debut of Shyamalan’s daughter Saleka as pop singer Lady Raven, who plays a major role in the cast of Trap. Saleka’s Lady Raven sings and performs throughout Trap at a concert venue where Hartnett’s Cooper is being set up. Most of the original music in Trap was made specifically by Saleka under her fictional pop star name Lady Raven.
Trap has received mixed reviews after being released in theaters on August 2, 2024. While Trap may not go down as one of Hartnett’s all-time best movies, debuting with a Rotten Tomatoes critic score of 44%, it still has a great chance of being profitable at the box office after meeting its opening weekend box office expectations with a $15.6 million worldwide gross. Trap’s Rotten Tomatoes critic score has improved to 53% as of the time of writing, with a positive audience score of 65% to go along with it. Trap needs to gross more than $54 million to surpass 2023’s Knock at the Cabin and $90 million to outperform 2021’s Old but likely won’t come close to the box office success of Glass (2019) and Split (2016).
Following his breakout roles in teen horror films such as Halloween H20 and The Faculty, Josh Hartnett became one of the most in-demand young actors in Hollywood during the early 2000s. He became a star in war movies like Pearl Harbor and Black Hawk Down before stepping into other popular roles in movies like The Black Dahlia, Lucky Number Slevin, Sin City, and 30 Days of Night. Hartnett has made a major comeback over the last few years after he appeared in Black Mirror season 6 and Christopher Nolan’s Best Picture winner Oppenheimer and has shown no signs of slowing down as the serial killer Cooper Adams in Trap.
12 Cooper Steals Jamie’s Access Card While Getting Riley A T-Shirt
As shown in the Trap trailer, Cooper initially discovers the FBI trap set for The Butcher by befriending a venue employee named Jamie who sells Lady Raven merch. Jamie is completely oblivious to the fact that Cooper may have an underlying motive behind his series of questions about the trap and ends up telling Cooper the secret code that was given to all venue employees, which is “Hamilton.” Cooper tries to buy a T-shirt for his daughter Riley but they ran out of her size, so he accompanies Jamie to a supply room in an employees-only section of the arena. As Jamie reaches for a box of merch, Cooper inconspicuously pulls his employee keycard and pockets it.
11 Cooper Uses Access Card To Acquire An FBI Radio & Earpiece
Cooper’s next step is to use Jamie’s employee keycard to gain access to other restricted areas of the venue to plan an escape route. He successfully finds an employees-only area where a SWAT team is having a meeting about The Butcher. Remarkably, nobody notices Cooper or finds him suspicious as he weaves in and out of a group of SWAT officers pretending to get a coffee. He even helps one of the cops by lending him his “secret stash” of sugar he happens to find in a cabinet. On his way out, Cooper spots a police radio attached to a bag and slyly takes it without anyone noticing, giving him access to the FBI director’s communications.
10 Cooper Thinks About Setting Off Fire Alarm & Escaping Through Underground Platform But Doesn’t
Image via Warner Bros.
With FBI Director Josephine Grant in his ear, Cooper locates a fire alarm and plans on setting it off to create a distraction. That is until he hears Grant tell the SWAT and police officers that she expects The Butcher to do just that, which forces Cooper to stop in his tracks and quickly think on his feet. Cooper found one of the fire alarms by looking at a blueprint map of the venue on his phone but quickly learned that FBI Director Grant was already one step ahead of him. Later, back at his floor seats with Riley, he eyes a platform door that was used to introduce one of the special guests (rapper Russ) and tries to get Riley to go down with him, which strikes Riley as very odd.
Related Every Real-Life Singer & Rapper In Trap
M. Night Shyamalan’s latest film Trap features several actual rappers & singers playing fictional famous artists, including Kid Cudi, Russ, & Saleka.
9 Cooper Sets Off An Oil Explosion In A Vendor’s Kitchen
With the fire alarm no longer an option, Cooper finds a way to get into a vendor’s kitchen at the venue to set another distraction. He puts full bottles of canola oil into a deep frier and turns the heat all the way up, which causes an explosion that leaves one young worker severely burned. This allows Cooper to go up to the roof of the venue where he pretends he’s one of the cooks who is traumatized by the burn victim’s wounds. He is confronted by two armed SWAT members, tells them the code word “Hamilton”, and luckily finds a cook’s wallet in an apron he stole, which has an identification and clearance card that was given to employees before the concert.
8 Cooper Befriends Lady Raven’s Uncle To Be Exempt From Questioning
In another stroke of luck for Cooper, he meets a spotter on the floor of the concert and he tells him his daughter has leukemia. This inspires the spotter, who is Lady Raven’s uncle played by M. Night Shyamalan, to make Riley Lady Raven’s Dreamer Girl, meaning she can go onstage and get backstage access. All this luck that Cooper keeps having is why Cooper keeps laughing at his good fortune, almost as if he’s meant to escape. Right as a SWAT officer is about to bring Cooper in for questioning, Lady Raven’s uncle gives him an all-access pass and tells the officer “he’s with us.”
7 Cooper Reveals Himself To Lady Raven & Forces Her To Drive Him & Riley Out In Her Limo
Even though Cooper and Riley gain backstage passes and watch Lady Raven from the side of the stage, the all-access pass isn’t enough to avoid the police questioning on the way out. Feeling as though he’s completely out of options, he and Riley wait for Lady Raven backstage (and in the meantime receive a hilarious guest appearance from Kid Cudi as a fictional diva called The Thinker). Riley is having the best day of her life as Cooper asks to speak to Lady Raven in private. They go into her dressing room where Cooper shows Lady Raven the live feed of Spencer, his latest victim, and says that he will die unless she gets them out of the venue.
6 Cooper Locks His Family In A Bedroom After Lady Raven Steals His Phone & Calls For Help
Cooper successfully avoids being screened by authorities on the way out of the venue by riding with Lady Raven. He did not expect, however, for Lady Raven to make a play of her own, asking Riley if she could come in and see her house. Cooper’s wife Rachel and son Logan are stunned to see Lady Raven and are seemingly oblivious to what’s really going on. After Lady Raven steals Cooper’s phone and locks herself in the bathroom, Cooper locks his family in an upstairs bedroom without explanation and tries to kidnap Lady Raven, who has already notified the police.
5 Cooper Escapes His House Surrounded By SWAT Through A Secret Tunnel
Cooper realizes he’s stuck once he finds his family standing in the driveway, terrified after escaping the locked bedroom through a window. Lady Raven gets out and Cooper shuts the garage door, which for a moment teased that he was about to take his own life. As SWAT teams surround his family home and eventually break in, they discover a secret door in the kitchen wall that has a tunnel to the neighbor’s yard, an escape route Cooper had likely created long ago and used at the perfect time.
4 Cooper Dresses As A SWAT Officer & Poses As Lady Raven’s Limo Driver
Image via Warner Bros.
After escaping from his own house through the tunnel, Cooper somehow is fully dressed in SWAT attire and tells Lady Raven’s limo driver that he is authorized to drive the pop singer away from the scene. Cooper drives for some time until he pulls over in a remote location and reveals himself to Lady Raven, using handcuffs on her to ensure she can’t run off or open the door. Cooper gets back into the driver’s seat and drives with new plans to either murder Lady Raven or use her as collateral.
Related Trap: How [SPOILER] Knew That Cooper Was The Butcher
The elaborate trap set by the FBI at the Lady Raven concert in Trap was shockingly set up by someone who Cooper would have never suspected.
3 Cooper Changes Clothes Again & Blends Into Crowd As SWAT Surrounds The Limo
Cooper drives through the center of a busy downtown area, where fans of Lady Raven’s notice her limo and crowd around it. Lady Raven is able to press the window button and lower it just enough for her fans to see that she’s in trouble. It doesn’t take long before the FBI and SWAT teams arrive on the scene as Lady Raven breaks free and walks out of the limo into the crowd. Little does she know that Cooper somehow was able to change into another pair of causal clothes and blend into the crowd, staging the SWAT attire in the driver’s seat as a decoy.
2 Cooper Tries To Fight SWAT Officers After Attempting To Kill Rachel But Is Heavily Drugged & Tased
Cooper’s back and forth with Lady Raven finally ends. Rather than escaping the area, which might have been the wisest thing to do, he goes back to his family home and confronts Rachel in their kitchen. Evading the police presence outside, he gets Rachel to confess that it was her who set up the concert trap in the first place. As a result, Cooper feels that he has to kill her for ruining his life and his relationship with his kids, which is outrageous.
Rachel insists that they eat some pie before he goes on with it and he agrees but ends up getting sedated from his own supply that Rachel found in his getaway/murder bag. Two SWAT officers appear, as well as the FBI Director who Cooper delusionally thinks is his strict mother, and tase Cooper who finally goes down after a violent struggle.
1 Cooper Frees Himself From Handcuffs In Back Of Police Truck With A Bicycle Spoke
Custom Image by Yeider Chacon
Cooper regains consciousness in handcuffs and is escorted to the back of an FBI police truck. Before he goes in, he hugs his daughter Riley and picks up her fallen bicycle, a seemingly innocent and nearly human gesture. Cooper appeared trapped in the back of the truck in police custody, headed for a lifetime of prison or potentially a death sentence when it’s revealed he stole a spoke from one of the bike’s tires. He pulls it out of his sleeve and uses it to unlock his handcuffs, laughing hysterically as yet again he has found a way to escape in Trap.
Trap 
3.0 Not Yet RatedThrillerMystery
Trap is a film by writer-director M. Night Shyamalan under his Blinding Edge Pictures label. The film is part of a deal struck with Warner Bros for him to direct and produce several films under their banner.
Director M. Night Shyamalan Release Date August 2, 2024 Studio(s) Blinding Edge Pictures , New Line Cinema Distributor(s) Warner Bros. Pictures , New Line Cinema Writers M. Night Shyamalan Cast Josh Hartnett , Hayley Mills , Marnie McPhail , Vanessa Smythe , Saleka Shyamalan , Malik Jubal , Jonathan Langdon , Peter D’Souza , Ty Pravong , Kaitlyn Dallan Main Genre Thriller Expand