M Night Shyamalan reveals true story that inspired new movie ‘Trap’
It’s probably not a coincidence that the worst movie M Night Shyamalan has ever made, The Last Airbender, came on the one and only occasion he adapted pre-existing source material for the screen, even if his latest psychological thriller, Trap, was partially inspired by genuine events.
The Last Airbender aside, all of Shyamalan’s features have been original stories, and while his imagination has provided a few missteps of its own, his innate desire to tell unique tales for almost the entirety of his career should be commended. Trap is the latest to hail from the Academy Award-nominated filmmaker’s creatively fertile brain, but he was lent an assist by a very real operation.
Trap follows Josh Hartnett’s doting father, Cooper, who attends a concert with his daughter while remaining completely oblivious that the entire thing is a setup designed to lure in and capture a notorious serial killer the authorities know is in attendance.
It’s a fairly fantastical scenario, but not one without merit, after Shyamalan acknowledged 1985’s Operation Flagship as one of his touchstones. In 1985, the FBI mounted a very similar move to capture wanted criminals in large numbers.
Thousands of fugitives were offered free tickets to watch an American football game and potentially snag an all-expenses-paid trip to the Super Bowl. All they had to do was show up at a local TV station to collect their prize. Unbeknownst to them, the competition and the station were fabrications concocted by the federal government.
Speaking to the BBC, Shyamalan shared how the “totally absurdist” nature of Operation Flagship has stuck in his memory since he first heard about it as a kid. Using it as the jumping-off point for Trap, he refitted it as a concert headlined by pop star Lady Raven, played by his daughter and aspiring musician Saleka.
“It just stuck with me, and I guess when Saleka and I were thinking about a movie at a concert, I wondered, why would this person not be able to get out, and how can I keep them there?” he wondered before clarifying that he didn’t pull directly from Operation Flagship beyond its core conceit.
Shyamalan’s Trap carries “the spirit of the idea of being trapped in the absurdity of it,” which is ironic when Hartnett’s character buying tickets to see his daughter’s favourite singer is decidedly more realistic than the FBI attempting to entice thousands of fugitives with Super Bowl tickets being handed out by a fake TV station.
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