In a post on ScreenCraft, Alyssa Miller examines how M. Night Shyamalan leads his audience to root for a serial killer, the protagonist of his recent film, Trap.
In the film, Cooper takes his daughter to a pop concert, only to discover that the concert was an elaborate ruse to draw him out of hiding. “Shyamalan leans into the cat-and-mouse game throughout Trap to build a complex narrative that blurs the line between good and evil,” Miller writes. “As the threat gets closer, Cooper’s decision-making skills must be quick and calculated. How will this next step aid or hurt him? How will it affect his daughter’s good time?”
Someone has to win, but the audience isn’t sure who and many may find themselves rooting for a serial killer to escape justice. Rather than following the detectives on the case, the film tracks the movement of the villain. “The perspective flip works because the stakes are so clearly established at the beginning of the film,” Miller says. “Cooper is attending the concert for his daughter (gold-star dad moment) but occasionally sneaks away to monitor the person in a basement on his phone.” Both elements of the protagonist’s persona are put into action in the same physical space, blurring boundaries for the character, as well as the audience.
“If the story was told through the perspective of Dr. Josephine Grant (Hayley Mills), an FBI profiler, the story’s only stake would be that one of the small pool of men attending the pop concert was a killer,” Miller notes. In contrast, telling the story from Cooper’s perspective puts the audience in the danger seat.
Still, the audience needs to root for the villain, and is inspired to do so by Cooper’s relationship with his daughter. “We see Cooper’s deep care for his daughter as he attends her favorite pop singer’s concert, checks in with her after discovering she has been shunned by a friend, and sympathizes with the youth lost in other people’s lives,” Miller writes. “To root for his daughter’s happiness to to root for Cooper’s.” This love for his daughter drives Cooper to try to evade the police trap, raising the stakes above the obvious desire for continued freedom.
