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‘Trap’ Review: A Wildly Entertaining Father-Daughter Thriller

Josh Hartnett anchors M. Night Shyamalan’s concert-set thriller about a father, his teenage daughter, and a police sting. Expect heightened suspense with a goofy streak, not procedural realism.
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Trap is most fun when it stops pretending to be a sober police procedural and lets Josh Hartnett play two versions of the same father: the awkward dad at a pop concert and the practiced predator hiding in plain sight. M. Night Shyamalan’s 2024 thriller turns a father-daughter outing into an intentionally outsized cat-and-mouse game—silly at times, tense at others, and unusual enough in its concert setting to hold attention.

What is Trap about?

Cooper takes his teenage daughter to see pop star Lady Raven. At the concert, they discover that the event is connected to a police sting aimed at catching a serial killer known as the Butcher. That setup is the film’s central hook: a family outing becomes a crowded arena in which a father has reasons to pay attention to both his daughter and the operation around them.

This review stays with that premise. The film’s later turns are best encountered without advance explanation.

Why the concert setting works

The arena gives the thriller a distinctive playing field. A concert brings together a large crowd, a performer with a devoted audience, and the practical pressures of keeping a father-daughter outing moving. Shyamalan uses that setting to make the premise feel like a public spectacle rather than a conventional investigation unfolding in offices and interview rooms.

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#1 Best Overall

That choice also sets the film’s tone. The police operation is an elaborate contrivance, not an invitation to measure the story against a realistic account of law enforcement. The pleasure lies in watching Cooper navigate the situation while trying to maintain the appearance of an ordinary, attentive parent.

Josh Hartnett is the film’s main attraction

Hartnett gives Cooper a sharp split between outward awkwardness and concealed control. His performance makes the father-daughter dynamic part of the suspense: small gestures that might read as ordinary parental fussiness can also feel calculated. The role depends on that uneasy double register, and Hartnett is the reason the film’s heightened premise has a compelling center.

The Atlantic’s August 3, 2024 review called the film “sillier than it is scary” and singled out Hartnett’s contribution to its success. That is one critic’s framing, but it captures the balance the movie leans into: suspense is present, yet the performance and premise invite a degree of amused disbelief.

A thriller that embraces its goofier side

Trap is not consistently frightening, and its elaborate setup asks the viewer to accept a fair amount of theatricality. If you want tightly grounded procedural logic, the movie’s choices may test your patience. If you are happy to watch a suspense story grow increasingly heightened, the same choices become part of the entertainment.

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TIME’s August 2, 2024 review described the film’s energy as amiably goofy and placed it in the middle of Shyamalan’s filmography rather than at either extreme. Together, those reviews suggest a useful expectation, not a universal verdict: this is better approached as a knowingly outsized thriller than as a grim or strictly plausible crime story.

Cast, credits, and running time

M. Night Shyamalan wrote and directed the 2024 film. Josh Hartnett plays Cooper, Saleka Shyamalan plays Lady Raven, and the listed cast also includes Ariel Donoghue, Hayley Mills, and Alison Pill. The British Board of Film Classification lists the runtime as 105 minutes and identifies threat and tension; Apple TV gives the equivalent duration as 1 hour 45 minutes.

Warner Bros. Italia lists August 7, 2024, as the film’s Italian theatrical release date. That is a territory-specific date, not a worldwide release date.

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Who should watch Trap?

  • Give it a try if you enjoy Shyamalan’s high-concept setups, Hartnett’s performance, or a thriller that plays with suspense and absurdity in equal measure.
  • Choose something else if you need a tightly realistic police procedural or want sustained, unambiguous horror.
  • Go in knowing only the setup if you want the later developments to retain their surprise.

Where to watch

Listings for Trap have appeared on Apple TV, Hulu, and Netflix, but those listings do not establish current availability everywhere. Streaming rights change by territory and over time, so check the services available in your market. The surfaced home-video information also does not confirm a current retailer listing or stock; verify the edition and region before buying.

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