M. Night Shyamalan's Take on Male Predators + Fashion Week & The Debate

It Gets Meta

Dearest Reader,

I’m just coming down from a surprisingly intense New York Fashion Week. I worked behind the scenes during a mega event over several days and may have discovered a new love for fashion! Although this week’s newsletter is dedicated to director M. Night Shyamalan’s latest feature Trap (2024), I think I’ll weave several experiences I had throughout the week that are complimentary to my experience in theaters watching this film. Shyamalan is certainly one of my favorite filmmakers. He’s an Indian-American director born out of independent cinema before it was taken over my canned block-busters in the early aughts. His third feature The Sixth Sense (1999) starring Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment was a surprise, runaway hit reintroducing suspense to popular culture and cementing Shyamalan’s as a technically skilled, creatively ingenious writer/director. I saw The Sixth Sense in theaters back then and it blew my mind. Although Shyamalan has explored various genres in his films and arguably kicked off the superhero craze with his 2000 feature Unbreakable also starring Willis, his latest Trap is a return to his passion for suspense mixed with the flavor of true crime. Trap is a fascinating point-of-view (POV) experience with a serial killer who, to me, is a stand in for male predation writ large.

As part of a fashion week production team, I was very amused my everything I was seeing and experiencing. Fashion is a unique and pronounced subculture with a whole cast of characters and attitudes. But when you are behind the scenes of any public facing production there is an undiscussed social contract when a group of strangers come together. Yes there will be security, but we are all there to enjoy ourselves in a relatively safe environment. But we never really know who is in the audience or their intentions…especially if a predator is good at hiding. Gratefully, I have mostly had positive experiences at public events because most people are decent, but Trap certainly makes you wonder.

Trap opens as a father and his pre-teen daughter attend a Taylor Swift-like pop concert at a large music venue. The father, Cooper, played by actor Josh Harnett, appears like any suburban dad accompanying his child, Riley (Ariel Donoghue), to her first concert. Riley is thrilled to attend and Cooper seems a bit distracted from the outset, noticing a high police presence. The camera has many POV shots from Cooper’s perspective as he examines his new environment. Cooper is a handsome, middle-aged, seemingly affable man and Riley, who is no older than 14 years old, is giddy with excitement as she walks towards her surprise orchestra seats, very close to the stage. This gift from her “loving” father is joyfully received as Riley is mesmerized by the stage and the pop icon named Lady Raven (Saleka Shyamalan). Before long, Cooper’s distractibility begins looking less like a protective father taking in his surroundings than someone looking for something or perhaps a bit threatened. At one point, the audience is startled when Cooper reveals a a remote camera view on his phone of a man chained in a basement.

At this point we are watching an increasingly dangerous-looking man maneuver freely around the venue. He leaves Riley multiple times, ostensibly to get snacks or use the restroom but is essentially casing the joint. Cooper eventually saunters into a break-room wearing a stolen employee name badge. The room is filled with SWAT team members, armed to the teeth. As Cooper grabs a coffee and pilfers a walkie talkie, he overhears that the police are in search of one man. Now listening in on police communications, Cooper overhears FBI profiler Dr. Josephine Grant (Hayley Mills), discussing the trap being laid for a suspected serial killer who they believe is in attendance. By now, we deduce that killer is Cooper.

Without going step by step through the games Cooper plays to evade justice, what becomes clear is that aside from the heavily male police force, the people Cooper is either threatened by, like the FBI profiler, or manipulating for personal gain, like his daughter, are women and girls. Indeed, the heroes of this feature are women or girls. It is the female gaze and intuition that unmasks Cooper and portends his downfall.

Given the growing popularity of the true crime genre and collective fascination with conditions like narcissism, sociopathy and psychopathy, alongside modern pop fandom, Trap is very effective in raising your blood pressure. I don’t want to totally ruin the plot, but suffice to say women and girls win the day against Cooper, despite his games, in surprising ways. Why I think the film is symbolic of male predation writ large is because of how charming, manipulative and handsome Cooper is. Researchers contend predators are often attractive, cunning or charming in some way. While watching a cute stranger slither around a concert made me reflect on fashion week in New York City, Trap also brings to mind last week’s first (and only?) presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.

By most accounts, Trump failed to meet the moment whereas Harris was poised, prepared and relentless in putting the former president off balance. What I have since learned is that every move Harris made, including a few well placed facial expressions, was calculated. For years many speculated that Trump is a malignant narcissist, prone to self-centeredness and an explosives temper just underneath his undeniable charm. Former Trump staffers are advising the Harris team on first-hand experience with Trump and I wouldn't be surprised if they had someone do a psychological profile on him, given the treasure trove of footage, testimonials and books about the man.

Apparently, according to former Trump staffer turned Harris surrogate Anthony Scaramucci, Barack Obama’s DNC speech when the former president made a hand gesture about Trump’s crowd sizes and when Harris, in the debate, quipped that Trump rallies are poorly attended and boring—that was all premeditated to infuriate him. The debate was effectively a trap! By the end of the debate Trump looked like a lunatic caught in lies and exclaiming about immigrants eating American pets which is totally unsubstantiated. And Harris, for her part, continues to defy expectations during her campaign’s carefully curated march towards elections in November. Electoral college polls are still too close to call with neither Trump or Harris clearly in the lead. However, Trump is definitely threatened by the Harris campaign and new reporting suggests he may buck the election results or that his supporters will, as many brace for a chaotic election.

Trap feels like a small indie film with great actors both familiar and new. But it’s success, for me, lies in the combination of familiar experiences like a pop concert (with a young, empowered female artist) or father-daughter outings complicated by undercover male predation that only women and girls can uncover. However, as the film reveals, men like Cooper are hard to cage and they bring danger to everyone around them. As of Sunday September 15th an alleged second attempt to kill Donald Trump took place at his golf course in Florida. The incident, though Trump is unharmed, is being investigated by the FBI after the Secret Service opened fire on an armed suspect hiding in the bushes about 300-500 yards away. Thankfully the alleged assassin is in custody. As much as many celebrated the debate last week as a Harris victory, two attempts on the life of any public figure portends something sinister. Perhaps more of us than just Donald Trump are in a trap…let’s hope things cool down.

With Love During End Times,

Agunda