Aahana Swrup
M. Night Shyamalan’s ‘Trap’ is a tense suspense thriller film that finds its protagonist caught in the jaws of a dangerous and meticulously built snare that threatens to spell out their demise. As famous pop star Lady Raven arrives in town to put on a show, Cooper finds himself attending her concert with his overeager teenage daughter, Riley. However, as the concert begins, sporting a surplus of security for the venue, the father-daughter duo realizes that the FBI is on the lookout for a notorious serial killer, the Butcher, who is rumored to be at the show.
While Riley has the time of her life watching Lady Raven perform, Cooper remains on alert, prepared for the chaos that the killer’s detection might bring. The film charts a riveting story, ripe with unpredictable twists and turns that peel the layers of a peculiar protagonist. As the narrative progresses and the mystery unravels, certain doubts are bound to rise. SPOILERS AHEAD!
Trap Plot Synopsis
Riley is prepared for the biggest day of her life after her father, Cooper, gets them floor tickets for Lady Raven’s headlining concert. As such, arriving at the concert, the teenager doesn’t even note the swaths of FBI agents and police officers that seem to be stationed at every exit. Nevertheless, the same doesn’t escape Cooper’s notice. Shortly after the concert begins and the father excuses himself to the restroom, the reason behind his paranoia reveals itself: through his phone, Cooper is keeping watch over a young man— tied up and gagged inside a basement. Whatever he’s involved in hardly seems legal, making the concert venue an inherently unsafe place for him.
Even after returning to the concert and finding himself surrounded by Lady Raven’s dedicated fanbase, Cooper can’t help but notice the police subtly—but periodically—pulling people from the crowd to question. Eventually, as the duo ventures out to the merch stand, Cooper befriends the vendor, Jamie, and learns that the feds have surrounded the area because they received a tip-off that The Butcher, a brutal serial killer, will be in attendance. The man realizes no one can get in or out of the venue without clearance from the authorities, which further puts him on edge.
Over the next few hours, Cooper continues to find excuses for leaving the concert hall to find any possible escape routes, but the stadium seems to be tightly sealed. Even so, he manages to steal a walkie-talkie to remain privy to the feds’ tactics for tracking the killer down to ensure he doesn’t walk into any more traps. Eventually, inspiration strikes after Riley offhandedly mentions the “Dreamer Girl” part of the concert, where Lady Raven picks a lucky girl from the crowd to perform one song and visit backstage.
Cooper secures the part for Riley after approaching Raven’s uncle and charmingly spinning a tale about Riley’s fabricated battle with leukemia. Lo and behold, when the time comes, Riley ends up getting selected, earning her and her father access backstage. As Cooper maneuvers through it all, he also tries to avoid the FBI profiler, Josephine Grant. Once the concert ends, the father realizes he still has to go through a security check to leave the stadium. Therefore, he plays his last, most risky card.
After Raven comes to talk with Riley, Cooper corners her for a minute and reveals that he’s The Butcher, whom everyone has been looking for. He also pulls out his phone and shows her the CCTV footage of his bound hostage, Spencer. Cooper threatens to release carbon monoxide with the press of a button into Spencer’s basement unless Raven takes him and his daughter out of the venue in her limousine. If the pop star utters a word about his secret to anyone, including his daughter, she would subsequently condemn Spencer to his death.
Trap Ending: Does Lady Raven Save Spencer? Does She Survive?
Even though Spencer’s predicament is introduced early into the story, his exact situation remains a mystery for some time. Eventually, it ends up being the perfect final trick that Cooper needs to orchestrate his grande escape. Having overheard Raven’s conversation with Grant, he knows that the pop star deeply cares about catching the killer. For the same reason, he concludes she wouldn’t be able to leave Spencer to die if she could help it. Consequently, Raven ends up agreeing to drive Riley and Cooper out of the venue in her limo, allowing the latter to escape the feds’ clutches easily.
Nevertheless, Raven turns out to be bolder than previously assumed. Even though she invites Riley—and, thereby, Cooper—into her limo to save Spencer’s life, she knows the man wouldn’t be safe for long in the psychotic father’s captivity. Rather than parting ways with them, she asks Riley if she could visit her house, much to the teenager’s excitement. For now, Raven is trying to buy some time while also keeping Cooper under her watch.
At the house, Raven meets Riley’s mother, Rachel, and younger brother, Logan, agreeing to come inside and hang around for some time. Knowing any wrong move can make Cooper snap, she maintains civility and refrains from mentioning his secret to his family. Eventually, after playing a song with Riley on the piano and snatching Cooper’s phone to take a selfie, Raven eventually bolts and locks herself inside the bathroom, which leads Cooper to bang on the door frantically. Even so, his family’s confusion keeps him at bay for some time.
Meanwhile, Raven goes through Cooper’s phone to find Spencer again. After talking to him through the security camera, she manages to glean some information about his possible whereabouts. She takes it to social media, asking her fans to track him down. Soon enough, someone manages to find him just as Cooper forces his way into the bathroom. Even though Raven has saved Spencer, her own life is now in danger. Once Cooper realizes what she has done, he attempts to take her with him to a second location, presumably to make her his next victim in retribution.
After Cooper’s family intervenes and the police arrive in tow, Raven manages to slip away from him and back to her limo. In the meantime, the cops storm the house in search of the killer. However, Cooper escapes through a secret exit and sneakily replaces Raven’s limo driver. By the time she realizes what has happened, it appears to be too late. Still, as they drive past the city, encountering a big crowd of her fans, the mob slows them down, allowing Raven to slip away as the cops catch up to them. In the end, Raven manages to escape with her life.
How Did the FBI Know Cooper Would be at The Concert?
After Raven escapes from the limousine, the cops realize that Cooper has also utilized her fans’ horde to slip through the crowd undetected. At this point, they have no further leads about him, and he seems to have slipped through their fingers. Rather than running away into the night, Cooper finds himself returning back home. After all, there’s one piece of the puzzle he can’t figure out. During her visit to his family, Raven reveals that the FBI knew The Butcher would be at the concert because they found a piece of the ticket receipt at a house where one of his victims was found. However, with dozens of kills under his belt, Cooper knows he isn’t sloppy enough to leave such clues behind.
At the house, Rachel, who has sent the kids to their aunt’s, stays alone. When Cooper returns, she’s the only one to greet him. Even though she tries to talk to him as if she believes in his innocence, she fails to fool Cooper, who has finally figured out the last puzzle piece. Somehow, his wife, who was supposed to know nothing about his more immoral proclivities, tipped off the cops about him. As he confronts Rachel, the truth emerges.
As it would turn out, Rachel had begun to suspect something was off with her husband after watching him consistently lie to other people in a seamlessly natural fashion. From there, bits and pieces of his behavior began to tick Rachel off until she decided to follow him from home one day. As a result, she found one of his abandoned houses, where he brought his victims. Even though the place was free of any clues and only had a chair and some rope, she couldn’t shake off the feeling that her husband was involved in something menacing.
For the same reason, Rachel left a piece of his Lady Raven concert ticket receipt at the house to confirm or negate her suspicions. When she discovered that the police suspected The Butcher’s presence at the concert due to the ticket, she realized her terrible hunch had been confirmed. In the end, Cooper’s wife was behind his demise after she had indirectly set him up for the feds at the Lady Raven concert.
Does Cooper Get Caught? Does He Escape?
Even though Cooper is on the edge of danger throughout the film, he never once stops to reel in his serial killer instincts. From Spencer and later to Raven, he seems eager to get his next kill even while he’s actively running from the law. His visit to Rachel remains much the same. Yet, in some ways, his plan to kill his wife is substantially different from any of his previous kills. Part of why Cooper likes to kill people is because of his own childhood trauma, where he grew up with an abusive mother. Therefore, he is now eager to chop people into pieces whenever he sees someone who is actualized and at peace with themselves, but Rachel isn’t that.
Cooper prides himself on keeping his personal and killer life separate from each other. For the same reason, he can’t bear the idea that his life has now spiraled out of control because his own wife suspected him of his heinous crimes. Furthermore, the fact that Rachel went as far as to leave a tip for the police feels like a betrayal to him. Thus, once he gets the entire story out of her, he plans on making her his last victim before he dies by suicide and ends The Butcher once and for all.
Rachel manages to buy some time and convinces Cooper to finish up Riley’s leftover pie, bringing two pieces to the dining table. However, he makes a big mistake by allowing himself to be swayed by his love for his daughter. Unbeknownst to him, Rachel had found his serial killer supplies and added his own brand of heavy sedative to his pie. Consequently, the pie ends up drugging Cooper, who loses his faculties. As a result, he begins hallucinating his own mother’s voice, which lures him out to the living room.
As it would turn out, the voice was actually Grant, the FBI profiler, who taught the same trick to Raven. Even though the popstar hadn’t been successful in psychologically tricking Cooper into complying with her, Grant has much better luck. As Cooper walks out to the living room, a SWAT team of agents tase him, finally getting the killer under their custody. In the end, the cops escort him out of the house right as his kids return. Riley runs up to her father to engulf him in a hug before recognizing the situation’s reality and returning to her mother.
For his part, Cooper is stored in the back of the van and driven away to his demise. Still, the killer has one more trick up his sleeve. While being escorted out of his house, he had stopped momentarily to pick up Riley’s turned-over bicycle. Initially, the action had appeared as an innocent—if hysteric— act of fatherly concern. However, Cooper actually used the opportunity to pocket a wire from the bicycle’s wheel. As a result, alone in the back of a van, armed with the wire, Cooper easily lockpicks his handcuffs. As the story comes to an end, despite being under the FBI’s custody, Cooper has every opportunity to escape once the van halts to a stop. Therefore, despite the elaborate trap, it seems Grant has failed to catch the brutal killer.
Read More: Trap: Where Was M. Night Shyamalan’s Movie Filmed?
