M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap is aimed at the biggest true-crime fans

True crime is in the middle of a sustained cultural moment. The simmer began back in 2014, when Serial burst onto the scene — the first podcast to reach 5 million downloads. It rose to a new boil in 2020 and 2021, when viewers stuck in COVID quarantine at home found an escape in trying to solve real and fictional crime because they couldn’t solve the pandemic. It’s still one of the United States’ most popular genres — especially among women, who make up the majority of true-crime book readers, and who are twice as likely as men to regularly tune in to true-crime podcasts. In a recent YouGov poll, 61% of American women (as compared to 52% of American men) said they watch true-crime content. All of which may help explain the ending of M. Night Shyamalan’s serial-killer thriller Trap, now streaming on Max.

[Ed. note: This analysis contains major spoilers for M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap.]

Research shows that many girls and women drawn to true-crime books, podcasts, documentaries, and late-night Googling find a productive catharsis in investigating how past predators have operated, and the aesthetic of educating themselves about real-world violence. In other words, consciously or unconsciously, true-crime aficionados feel like studying real-life stories might help them avoid becoming victims themselves.

There is a sense of reclaiming power — real, imagined, and social — in consuming media that gives some degree of voice back to women permanently silenced by brutal acts. Enter Trap: Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan not only seems to understand this women-who-love-true-crime motivation, he actively caters to it.

Ostensibly, Trap is centered around Cooper (Josh Hartnett), a serial-killer dad dubbed The Butcher because he hacks his victims into pieces. When Cooper takes his teen daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to a pop concert, he discovers it’s an elaborate trap set by law enforcement to catch him. In its third act, though, Trap zigzags, shifting the point of view from Cooper to Lady Raven, a pop star played by Shyamalan’s real-life daughter (and real-life pop performer) Saleka Shyamalan, and then again to Cooper’s wife, Rachel (Alison Pill). A female profiler, Dr. Grant (Hayley Mills) sets the trap for Cooper, and Lady Raven and Rachel ultimately catch him.

First, though, a whole lot of men give him a pass and let him get away, and that’s worth discussing in light of who most consumes true-crime stories. When Cooper is trapped inside the concert venue, looking for holes in the security, his efforts are often aided by men who read his persona as a broad-shouldered, girl-dad firefighter, and assume the all-American best.

In one early, comedic scene, a good-natured merch seller (Jonathan Langdon) gives Cooper the lowdown on the law enforcement trap, even revealing the security code that stadium workers were given to prove their bona fides to police. In another scene, Cooper casually hangs out with a group of cops during a mission briefing, even helping an armed-to-the-teeth cop find sugar for his coffee, all because they don’t read him as a threat.

Part of true crime’s draw isn’t just exploring why people (mostly men) commit murder and other violent crimes, but learning more about how they’re so often able to get away with it. The genre (usually unintentionally) thrives on the unevenness of the social privileges granted to some groups of people and not others, and on revealing how assumptions born of these inequalities can support patterns of violence. Shyamalan focuses on this dynamic in Trap, and makes a point of showcasing the protections Cooper has just by virtue of being a good-looking, sociable white man who knows how to wield a dad joke.

While Trap has some of the elements of a true-crime story, and plays into them cleverly, the film is purely fictional entertainment, and Shyamalan uses that dynamic to play to a female audience. Many true-crime stories include a female victim whose only chance at justice is posthumous, but in Trap, the female characters are active participants in the murderer’s eventual downfall.

Cooper tries to use Lady Raven to outrun the law, but she isn’t a traditional damsel in distress; she’s a professional superstar and an amateur justice-bringer, and she’s ready to catch a killer. Later, after Cooper evades the police yet again, his own wife, Rachel, takes him down. When he returns to their suburban home to kill her, Rachel is waiting for him — scared, but determined to get answers, putting her in the same category as the true-crime fans searching for an explanation for violence. The movie plays it slow, leaning on our cultural assumptions that this demure white lady is solely a victim (like so many other white ladies in true crime), rather than a courageous amateur detective risking her life so she can look her husband in the face and ask questions.

In climactic, subtle succession, Lady Raven and Rachel use their respective strengths to take down a predator. And they do it without the kinds of masculine-coded traits — e.g., physical strength or stoic reasoning — that female characters usually need to win in Hollywood. Instead, in Trap, the feminine-coded wiles that fell Cooper — pop star fannishness and baking — are much more true-crime-fan adjacent.

The subtle distinction is where this film’s true power lies. Cooper gets a “villain lives to fight another day” ending at the film’s finale, but the women in this world get to play out a kind of true-crime listener fantasy. The murderer’s cover is blown. He has lost his temper and his control of how people see him. He may leverage his privilege and resume his murderous career, but he’ll have a much harder time duping people and going undetected. In Trap, women don’t have to rely on a podcaster to tell their story posthumously, or hunt for clues about criminality after it’s all too late. They don’t just find and save the victim — they learn more about what kind of man does this kind of thing, and they show they aren’t going to fall for it.

Trap is now streaming on Max, and is available for rental or purchase on digital platforms.