Josh Hartnett gets caught in a Trap in new M. Night Shyamalan trailer

What if the public event you were attending was entirely a setup just to getcha? That’s the nightmare of paranoiacs and Truman Show fans everywhere, and also the premise of M. Night Shyamalan’s new film Trap, premiering in theaters August 9. A new trailer for the film takes advantage of star Josh Hartnett’s good-guy image by casting him as the dad-joke-cracking sweetheart taking his daughter to see her favorite artist. But this is a Shyamalan movie, so obviously, the concert—and Hartnett himself—are more sinister than they appear.

You see, this trailer lets you in on a secret almost immediately: that sweet ol’ dad is also “The Butcher,” the “freakin’ nutjob that goes around just chopping people up,” as one of the merch table attendants describes him. He’s got somebody locked in his secret murder room as the concert goes on, but the feds are literally closing in on the concert. You may think that’s giving too much of the movie away, but the story isn’t “Who is The Butcher?” The story is, “Will The Butcher be able to escape the trap, and be able to do so without letting his daughter know he’s an evil villain?”

According to IndieWire, Shyamalan said Trap was inspired by Purple Rain (and perhaps by allowing his daughter to live out her own pop star fantasies, since his daughter Saleka plays the idol Lady Raven). The director staged an actual concert befitting of The Eras Tour to film Trap, but he began conceptualizing the movie years before this summer’s big blockbuster tours. “Sometimes, culture moves in your direction, and sometimes it doesn’t,” he told IndieWire. “In this case, the culture of concerts is crazy now. Taylor [Swift] and Beyoncé—it’s just such a thing in culture. And I do think gathering together is so precious to us now. Maybe we took it for granted before our phones and COVID and all that stuff. It’s wonderful that the culture moved toward this idea.”

Speaking at an event earlier this week, Shyamalan said (per IndieWire), “I leaned more and more to this dark humor angle that Servant has, and The Visit, and Split has. Really embracing that, and making sure it’s just a fun time for everybody gasping. It’s odd to be laughing when you should be terrified, and terrified when you’re laughing at the same time.”