Trap: Release Date, Trailer, Cast And Other Things We Know About M. Night Shyamalan's Movie

With the Trap release date quickly approaching, it has us thinking, if there is one undeniable thing about M. Night Shyamalan’s best movies, it is that the filmmaker has come up with some of the most amusing concepts for a thriller, and this new film is already no exception. The latest upcoming horror movie from the Oscar-nominated creator of one of the best horror movies of all time, 1999’s The Sixth Sense, certainly has me interested, but also curious if, like most of his films, there is more than meets the eye. Let’s see if we can figure out the twist in Trap as we take a look at what we know about the film so far.

What Is The Trap Release Date?

Trap is set to hit in theaters on August 2, 2024. The upcoming 2024 movie shares its release date with another anticipated film about a killer called Cuckoo, starring Hunter Schafer. There are also plenty of other films coming out that month that are sure to give audiences a scare, such as Fede Alvarez’s Alien: Romulus and Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut, Blink Twice.

The Latest Trap Trailer Expands On Its Very Intriguing Twist

Typically, M. Night Shyamalan likes to keep as many details about his films under wraps and save the big surprises for the end of the movie, but the first trailer for Trap seemed to reveal an astonishing detail about the plot. After the main character discovers that the concert he is attending with his daughter is being barricaded to catch a killer, the teaser dropped a hint suggesting he is the so-called Butcher. The details provided in the second trailer for Trap seem to not only confirm the protagonist’s identity, but offer further insight into his criminal mindset, as you can see by watching it below:

The promo starts off with a few familiar moments, such as our protagonist’s daughter enjoying the show before he leaves and discovers why the venue is heavily guarded, before veering in new, more sinister directions. It appears that he does not want to go down with this trap without a fight – figuring out ways to stay one step ahead of the authorities by swiping a walkie-talkie and creating distractions – and the trailer hints that the action might take us to his house/death chamber by the end. Knowing Shyamalan, there might be more to these details than the teaser seems to be letting on, and I am looking forward to learning more.

What Trap Is About

When Trap was first announced and described by Shyamalan as a “psychological thriller set at a concert,” it brought up many questions – such as, what sort of psychological thrills can we expect to see at this show and does the title hint that “trap” will be the featured style of music. To answer the first question, as the trailer’s premiere during the Warner Bros. panel at CinemaCon 2024 revealed, it follows a man named Cooper taking his teenage daughter, Riley, to see her favorite singer, Lady Raven, perform live, where he notices an unusual amount of police officers surrounding the venue. After questioning a merchandise vendor about it, he learns that the entire show is being used as a “trap” to catch the notorious murderer known as “The Butcher,” whom the trailer seems to imply is none other than Cooper himself.

To answer the second question, Lady Raven’s style of music is not “trap,” but R&B that is written and performed by the actor portraying her: real-life musician and daughter of the filmmaker, Saleka Shyamalan. M. Night told CinemaBlend’s own Sarah El-Mahmoud how he and Saleka discussed ideas for a project they could work on together and the concept of a Purple Rain-esque experience in which the original music would be performed diegetically, while also lending to the themes and circumstances of the story, came up. Thus, Trap was born. 

Josh Hartnett Stars In The Trap Cast

The M. Night Shyamalan movies tend to feature wonderfully talented A-listers and that will also be the case with the filmmaker’s latest. Take a look at who plays who in the Trap cast below.

Josh Hartnett (Cooper)

Leading the Trap cast as Cooper is Josh Hartnett in his first collaboration with Shyamalan, but certainly not his first encounter with the horror genre. He made his acting debut in 1998’s Halloween H20: 20 Years Later before leading the Faculty cast, fighting vampires in Alaska in 2007’s 30 Days of Night, and playing a werewolf on Showtime’s Penny Dreadful. The Oppenheimer cast member’s most notable credits also include Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor, playing “The Salesman” in the Sin City cast, and one of the best episodes of Black Mirror (“Beyond the Sea”), more recently.

Ariel Donaghue (Riley)

Playing Cooper’s daughter, Riley, is Ariel Donaghue, who is also no stranger to horror as her best-known role to date comes from the Peacock original series, Wolf Like Me – a romantic, comedic take on lycanthropic lore. Some of her earlier credits include a guest-spot on the Australian coming-of-age drama, High Life, and playing a younger version of Mia Wasikowska’s character in 2022’s Blueback.

Saleka Shyamalan (Lady Raven)

The film’s plot kicks into gear when Cooper takes Riley to a concert headlined by popular artist, Lady Raven, who is played by M. Night Shyamalan’s daughter, Saleka, in her acting debut. However, Trap is not her first professional collaboration with her father as the accomplished R&B singer-songwriter’s music has been featured in some of M. Night’s work — namely 2021’s Old and the Apple TV+ series, Servant, which he executive produced. He also directed the music video for her 2021 single, “The Sky Cries.”

Hayley Mills (TBA)

Starring in Trap in a role that has not been officially disclosed – but briefly shown in the second trailer – is Hayley Mills. The English actor is most famous for another movie about an elaborate trap: 1961’s The Parent Trap, in which she gave dual performances as a pair of long lost twins conspiring to reunite their estranged mother and father. She also played the title role of 1960’s Pollyanna and, in the late 1980s, Good Morning Miss Bliss (before the sitcom was rebranded as Saved by the Bell) and, more recently, guest-starred on Amazon Prime’s The Wheel of Time.

Alison Pill (TBA)

Also in a currently undisclosed role Alison Pill, whose previous roles include playing Kim in the Scott Pilgrim vs. the World cast, a teacher in Snowpiercer, Mary Cheney in Vice, and Dr. Agnes Jurati on Star Trek: Picard, to name a few.

Scott “Kid Cudi” Mescudi (TBA)

Saleka is not the only musician appearing in this “concert movie,” as Scott Mescudi – better known as Kid Cudi – also has a role, which he personally confirmed in an X post before the second trailer offered a first look at his character. Unlike Saleka, however, the rapper has plenty of prior acting experience, sometimes as himself (like in Bill & Ted Face the Music or 2023’s House Party remake) or in original roles like Jackson from 2022’s A24 horror movie, X, or Jabari from the Emmy-winning animated Netflix movie, Entergalactic, which he also co-wrote.

Trap Is Rated PG-13

Like most of Shyamalan’s previous films, Trap rated PG-13 for some violent content and brief strong language. While we expected this, we would not have been surprised if the thriller was branded with an R by the MPA, considering the filmmaker has released a few films with this rating – including his most recent release, Knock at the Cabin – and the fact that the protagonist is a murderer.

Trap Is Written And Directed By M. Night Shyamalan

M. Night Shyamalan is both the writer and director of Trap, which should not come as a surprise to anyone familiar with his work. He has been involved in the script-writing process of every single film he has directed so far. Yet, he is not credited as a writer for the episodes of Servant and Wayward Pines that he helmed, so there is that.

Not to mention, Shyamalan has written and/or produced a couple of films that were handled by other directors. For instance (and this might come as a shock to some people), he ghost-wrote the teen rom-com She’s All That and he and Greg Brooker collaborated on a beloved kids movie, 1999’s Stuart Little, which was helmed by The Lion King director Rob Minkoff. He also produced and wrote the story for director John Erick Dowdle’s Devil from 2010. 

Trap Is "Very New Compared To" Shyamalan's Previous Work

While we have established that Shyamalan is usually behind his film’s screenplays in some capacity, his last few efforts were, notably, not bred from his own ideas. Old was inspired by the French graphic novel, Sandcastle, from Pierre-Oscar Lévy and Ferederik Peeters, and Knock at the Cabin, at least, bears adifferent ending than its source material: Paul Tremblay’s book, The Cabin at the End of the World. However, Trap is a different story, as he reflected in the following quote from an NME article in 2023:

Even Shyamalan acknowledges in the quote above — before the title for Trap was officially announced — that the new film is his freshest idea in a little while. That makes me even more excited for it because, as much as I enjoyed Knock at the Cabin and realize that Old has its fans, I think most would agree that he is usually at his best when working with stories from his own imagination — such as The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and its sequels, or the alien invasion classic, Signs.

The Thriller Is Part Of Shyamalan's New Deal With Warner Bros.

For several years, M. Night Shyamalan called Disney his home, with many of his films being released under the company’s Touchstone banner. In 2015, his take on the found-footage thriller genre, The Visit (also one of the best Blumhouse horror movies) marked his first partnership with them before he later partnered with Universal. Trap will be the filmmaker’s first Warner Bros. release.

According to a report by Deadline, Trap is part of a new, multi-year deal he signed with the prestigious studio in early 2023. Also involved in a Warner Bros. contract is another one of the filmmaker’s talented daughters, Ishana Shyamalan, who made her feature-length debut in June 2024 with The Watchers, which stars Dakota Fanning. The filmmaker previously wrote and directed episodes of Servant, was her father’s second unit director on Old, and has also helmed multiple music videos for her aforementioned sister, Saleka.

It looks like there is a lot more that Shyamalan fans can look out for, and not just from M. Night. Keep your eyes peeled for more updates on Trap.