Warner Bros. has released a new trailer for M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap, in which a serial killer colorfully dubbed “the Butcher” (Josh Hartnett) learns the cops plan to ambush him at the concert he’s just taken his daughter to. Feast your eyes below:
Though Shyamalan has used villain protagonists before, Trap will be his first placing a wanted serial killer in a role traditionally reserved for everyman action heroes in films like Die Hard or Sudden Death. It’s an intriguing inversion of a familiar trope, and one which begs the question: is Josh Hartnett the right actor for this? The teen idol-turned-television star—who, according to a 2020 interview with the Guardian, credits a 2001 Vanity Fair article with derailing his career—has been inching toward a comeback in the last year, playing both physicist Ernest Lawrence in Oppenheimer and a memorable astronaut in Black Mirror.
Trap co-stars Ariel Donoghue, Hayley Mills, Alison Pill, Marnie McPhail, and Vanessa Smythe, plus Saleka Shyamalan as “Lady Raven,” the pop star turned snare. It opens August 2.
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