Josh Hartnett is M. Night Shyamalan’s most recent startling revelation.
The 53-year-old writer-director of Trap tells the tale of a parent (Hartnett) who goes to a pop performance that turns out to be much more than it seems.
In the recently released Warner Bros. teaser, Hartnett, 45, is seen as an average father giving his daughter floor tickets at a major performance by Lady Raven, a pop sensation portrayed by Saleka Shyamalan, the director of Sixth Sense’s daughter.
Hartnett’s character discovers that the entire event is a planned attempt by federal police to apprehend a wanted murderer after leaving his daughter to ask about all the cops and surveillance he’s seeing.
“You know the Butcher?” A concert vendor opens up to Hartnett’s persona. “That freaking nut job that goes around just chopping people up? The Feds or whatever heard that he’s going to be here today. So they set up a trap for him.”
He goes on, calling the “whole concert” “a trap.” There’s no way out of this situation.
Hartnett’s response is difficult to interpret, but the teaser then divulges a sinister secret: He might be the Butcher in question, keeping an eye on a sobbing man who looks to be in captivity through his phone.
“Kinda dope, right?” asks the vendor. Hartnett laughs too, but his expression grows ominously dark.
At a Trap preview event in Los Angeles on April 16, Shyamalan remarked that it was “fun” to let the audience sympathize with a primary character before “taking advantage of that.”
The director of Split, who is tasked with casting his enigmatic lead part, revealed that he is constantly “looking for someone that’s willing to just let go completely, give themselves … to the movie and leap, leap, leap. Don’t protect yourself. That’s my job. And we both just empathize and find that beautiful electricity. That requires the right actor at the right time in their life. And that’s where Josh was when I met him.”
According to Shyamalan, Hartnett is “very smart and he’s very analytical.” “You can tell he’s curated his life in a way that’s rich and has a lot to say.”
As the movie came together, Shyamalan also disclosed that Saleka, the daughter of the director, ended up creating songs and even scoring Trap in addition to playing Lady Raven. “We’re huge fans of Purple Rain,” he remarked, citing the Prince record and film as inspiration for this endeavor.
Ariel Donoghue, Allison Pill, and Hayley Mills are featured in the cast.
In cinemas on August 9 is Trap.
