The new M. Night Shyamalan movie Trap is now streaming on Max, just in time for Halloween weekend.
Written and directed by Shyamalan, the films stars Josh Hartnett as Cooper: a lovable dad by day, and a sociopathic serial killer by night. Cooper takes his daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to a concert for her favorite fictional singer, Lady Raven (Saleka Night Shyamalan). When he realizes the concert is a trap set by the FBI to capture him, he has only the duration of the concert to find an escape.
Trap earned $71 million at the worldwide box office, more than doubling its reported $30 million production budget. But though it was a financial success, Trap, like many Shyamalan films, proved divisive for both critics and audiences. Some viewers—like yours truly—found Hartnett so endearing, and Shyamalan’s mastery of tension so compelling, that they were willing to gloss over the less-than-satisfying writing. Others, though, will no doubt take issue with the plot, particularly when it comes to the convoluted ending. Read on for a full breakdown of the Trap plot summary and the Trap ending explained.
Cooper Abbott (Josh Hartnett) takes his tween daughter, Riley (Ariel Donoghue), to a concert in Philadelphia for her favorite pop star singer, Lady Raven (Saleka Night Shyamalan). At the concert, Cooper notices an unusually large police presence, and asks one of the merch vendors what’s going on. The vendor, Jamie (Jonathan Langdon) informs Cooper that the FBI received a tip that an infamous Philadelphia serial killer, The Butcher, will be at the concert. The authorities have therefore secured all the exits to “trap” the butcher inside the venue, with no way out.
We soon learn that Cooper is, in fact, the Butcher. He has a live feed on his phone of one of his victims, Spencer, who he has trapped in a basement. Cooper tries a variety of ways to escape the venue, and in the process, discovers the FBI profiler, Josephine Grant (Hayley Mills) in charge of his case. Cooper lies to Lady Raven’s staff by claiming Riley has leukemia, which gets her selected as the special fan allowed to go on stage during the show, and to meet Lady Raven backstage after. Cooper thinks he’ll be able to avoid security by exiting backstage with Lady Raven… but discovers there is security at the back door, too.
In response, Cooper reveals to Raven he is the Butcher. He shows her the livestream of Spencer, and threatens to kill him via toxic fumes unless she agrees to privately escort both him and Riley out of the venue, allowing them to bypass security. Raven agrees, but then asks Riley to come with them to their house. Unable to say no in front of his daughter, the three go back to Cooper’s house, where they meet up with Cooper’s wife, Rachel (Alison Pill). Raven tells the entire family what she learned from the FBI profiler about the Butcher: That he has mommy issues, that he has OCD, and that they knew he would be at the concert today after discovering a receipt for the concert tickets in one of his fake houses.
Raven manages to steal Cooper’s phone, and locks herself in the bathroom. She uses his phone to communicate with Spencer to get details about where he was taken, and livestreams to her followers describing the house. One of her followers knows the house, and she urges them to go to it to rescue a man there that needs help. She also texts her driver to call the police. Meanwhile, Cooper locks his family upstairs. He breaks into the bathroom, and kidnaps Raven. In the garage of the house, Raven distracts Cooper by pretending to be his mother, thus dragging up those mommy issues that the FBI profiler told her about.
It’s enough time for Mom, Riley, and her brother to escape by climbing out the window, a detail that Cooper didn’t think of, because he’s never thought of his family as kidnapping victims before. The Abbott family is taken away by police, while Raven goes in her limo. When the police search the house, they don’t find Cooper in the house. He escapes via a secret tunnel by disguising himself as one of the SWAT team, and gets into Raven’s limo and takes over as the driver. Raven manages to escape Cooper in the limo by alerting fans nearby that she needs help, but Cooper also managers to escape by blending into the crowd.
Cooper returns to his family home, where he confronts his wife, Rachel. It’s revealed that Rachel already suspected Cooper was the Butcher, and that she was the one who left the receipt for the concert at one of his safe houses for the authorities to find, and tipped them off about the house. Cooper makes as if to kill Rachel with a butcher’s knife, but she convinces him to have a slice of pie, first.
After Cooper finishes his pie, he realizes Rachel drugged it, using the same drugged he used on his victims, to “calm them.” While drugged, Cooper hallucinates having a conversation with his mother, who praises him for showing emotion and humanity. She convinces him to step closer, and he does—and he’s tasered and captured by a SWAT team. It’s revealed that the FBI profiler, Josephine Grant, was impersonating Cooper’s mother, in the same way that Raven did earlier. We can assume from this that Grant must have guessed that Cooper would return to the house to talk to Rachel, and that the whole thing was yet another trap intended to capture him. Only this time, it worked.
Cooper is taken away in chains from the house. Before he goes, he straightens up a fallen bike in the yard. He’s OCD, remember? In the last scene of the film, we see Cooper chained in the back of the truck. Using a spoke from the bike he stole when he straightened it, he picks the lock on his cuffs and frees himself. He laughs, and the movie ends, with the implication that Cooper will once again escape this trap. Just call him Houdini!
There is a Trap mid-credits scene, but it’s just a fun, joke-y moment in which the vendor, Jamie, realizes he helped the Butcher escape. He vows never to speak to anyone at work again. That said, the newscaster doesn’t clarify whether Cooper is currently in custody, so the movie leaves it open-ended whether Cooper escaped or not. Personally, I like to think he did. You can’t trap the master!