M. Night Shyamalan Reveals The Secret To Bringing The Music & Concert To Life In Trap

Summary M. Night Shyamalan's thriller Trap centers on a father-daughter duo caught in a dark, sinister event at a concert.

The movie explores the father-daughter relationship, with Josh Hartnett bringing charm to the character of Cooper.

Saleka Shyamalan, M. Night's daughter, contributes original songs to create tension and enhance the concert experience.

Trap follows Cooper, a seemingly normal father, taking his daughter, Riley, to a concert. Eager to get inside, Riley is beyond excited about the tickets and the experience her dad is giving her, which he seems happy to share. However, things take a turn when Cooper notes the police officers everywhere and learns that the concert is in fact a trap to catch the serial killer, The Butcher. Cooper's darkest secret is in danger of being revealed, and he will do whatever it takes to escape the night unscathed.

Trap is helmed by acclaimed horror director M. Night Shyamalan, who also wrote the screenplay. Although the trailer seemingly revealed that Cooper is in fact the killer the police are after, there are countless theories about the twists and turns Shyamalan's latest thriller could take. Trap takes inspiration from an actual police sting known as "Operation Flagship" and the success of Taylor Swift's Eras Tour.

Related Trap: 8 Biggest Theories About M. Night Shyamalan's Upcoming Killer Twist Since Trap's trailer suggests that the movie will feature a Shyamalan-esque twist, many have come up with plausible theories about what it could be.

Screen Rant interviewed M. Night Shyamalan about his new thriller Trap. He discussed father-daughter relationships and casting Hartnett as the lead. Shyamalan also broke down why he took creating the concert so seriously and explained the process of collaborating with his daughter to bring her character to life through the music.

M. Night Shyamalan Explains Why Josh Hartnett Is Perfect For Trap

Trap is a tension-filled thriller, but the heart of the movie is the father-daughter relationship between Cooper and Riley. Shyamalan broke down why this dynamic is so important to him on a personal level and how Hartnett brought a certain charm to the dark character of Cooper.

M. Night Shyamalan: It's exactly why I hired him. When I met him, this sense of he's kind of a superstar when he walks in the room. He is a superstar, so I'm like, Ooh, I can use that charm for him to get away with everything that he's going to get away with. But he's a father of three girls. I'm a father of three girls. That part of it, it's hard to explain what that level of love is and what it means for a guy to have these daughters, and he was able to just convey that. Self-deprecating and this and that to be with your daughter, a fish out of water at a concert, you don't know any of the things that the pop star is doing, all of that stuff. It is very sweet. As men, we kind of disarm ourselves a little bit to be with our daughters, and we let go in a way maybe we wouldn't, we've never done before. So he got all of that, but also he's able to hold complex things and say, Hey, everything that makes me a superstar, I'm willing to risk all of that.

Shyamalan Reveals The Secret To The Music In Trap: "Lady Raven Is Writing These Songs"

Image via Warner Bros.

Saleka Shyamalan, M. Night's oldest daughter, brings her skills as a singer and songwriter to Trap. While Trap is her acting debut, Saleka also wrote fourteen songs for the movie. Each song helps build the tension and reflect the feelings of the character while also bringing the concert experience to life in a way that feels true and authentic.

M. Night Shyamalan: We found a little secret, I think, which was that we're obviously an Asian family that traditionally you just keep doing the work ethic, work incredibly hard, but traditionally goes to medicine or whatever it is, fields like that. All my parents and uncles are all doctors, and trying to aim it towards the arts is a tricky thing because you can't think your way through it. And so what ends up happening, one trick that has worked is you're not writing for yourself. You're this other character, so Saleka, this isn't you writing, Lady Raven is writing these songs and then so us talking about who she is. I mean, you have to ask her about it. We've talked about this a lot. It freed her because that Asian, I have to succeed. All that stuff goes away because that's not what Lady Raven's thinking. So she was freed to write, and so a kind of mischievousness came out in the way she wrote, and once we got that we were like, Whoa, that's the tone of the movie, and that's in her thing. And then she started to, on her own, as I said, Okay, song seven is this. It's when Josh's character is scamming this thing like that, and then she writes a song and it has a playful thing. It's almost representing his feeling. When things get tense, Cooper actually enjoys it. That's what these guys, they kind of enjoy that adrenaline rush that they're almost caught.

Now, not only were you putting on a world tour with this movie, but you were making a thriller within that movie that had to be an incredible challenge. Can you talk about that and your different approach to pre-production and production design in this film?

M. Night Shyamalan: This one was a real new lesson for me because the concert, the thing that's happening in the background, was so important to me, and so I put so much love in it. We made a real concert. It's a full-fledged concert everything, what's on the screens, choreography, costumes, everything, the sets, how they change all that stuff. It was really important. I think the audience feels that. You've probably seen movies with pop stars that are in it, and they're playing a singer in it, and it doesn't feel real. You're going, How can this be? This person's actually a real singer because those elements were not treated with love and depth, like the foreground elements were. You feel it, and it suddenly doesn't feel real. It feels like, Well, that wasn't a part of a real world. In this case, we spent so much time on that and that changed me because I found it incredibly rewarding that even though Josh is the main thing going on behind him, is this real thing that's happening. So even for the extras, they're reacting, we would shoot them first, to the concert that's happening and they were having a real reaction. I wasn't telling them to hoot and holler or do this or whoa. When that happened, their eyes were watching it like a real concert, which it was.

About Trap

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A father and teen daughter attend a pop concert, where they realize they’re at the center of a dark and sinister event.

Check out our other Trap interviews here:

Josh Hartnett

Saleka Shyamalan

Trap hits theaters August 2.

Source: Screen Rant Plus