(This post contains spoilers for Trap.)
Let me be the 586th person to point out the obvious: the Trap trailer gives too much away. If you somehow avoided it and walked into M. Night Shyamalan‘s latest thriller only knowing that it starred suddenly-everywhere Josh Hartnett and the plot had something to do with a The Eras-Tour inspired concert, good on you. Because everyone else already knew Trap‘s “twist”: the concert is a, well, trap set up the FBI to catch a serial killer known as The Butcher.
Except — and maybe this is the real “I see dead people” surprise — Shyamalan doesn’t think of that as a twist.
“That’s the premise of the movie,” he told Slash Film. “You’re watching it from the point of view of someone unexpected, is really what the movie’s telling you. Not necessarily a plot point, but his feeling, like what’s unconsciously happening is, you’re identifying with him as you’re finding out the premise of the movie. So that’s actually the funky twist of it, is not the information, that he’s in a trap or that he’s the killer — it’s that you are the killer.”
Is there another twist on top of the not-twist? Sort of.
During the concert, Cooper Adams (an excellent Hartnett) — who is The Butcher, in case that’s not obvious already — schemes his way to getting his daughter (Ariel Donoghue) a backstage pass to meet her idol, Lady Raven (Saleka Shyamalan). Cooper confronts Lady Raven in her dressing room after realizing there’s no way he’ll be able to leave the concert without getting caught. He tells Lady Raven that he’s the one they’ve been looking for and if she says anything, he’ll remotely kill a man who’s trapped in a basement.
Lady Raven escorts Cooper and his unaware daughter out of the venue in her limousine, and to stall for time, asks if she can visit their house. That’s where we meet Cooper’s wife, Rachel (Alison Pill), who — to skip some plot points and get to the final twist — is the one who told the feds that she suspected he was The Butcher.
Also, for most of the final 10 minutes of the movie, Josh Hartnett isn’t wearing a shirt. The real twist is the Russian twists you’re going to do after seeing how muscular he is.
Trap is out in theaters now.