One of the most polarizing thrillers of 2024 made a streaming comeback. The feature grossed over $83.6 million worldwide, but it was met with mixed reviews from fans and critics alike. But over the weekend, it found a brand new audience thanks to streaming. Trap by M. Night Shyamalan may not be one of the director’s greatest hits, but it is officially a streaming darling. The horror thriller starring Josh Hartnettwas repeatedly reported as a sleeper hit and was successful enough to get its own Simpsons parody. Nearly 2 years later, Trap continues to captivate audiences.
Over the weekend, Trap made a streaming comeback on Netflix, ranking at #6 on the streaming giant’s Top 10 Movies worldwide, sitting between Jennifer’s Body and Mechanic: Resurrection. Trap stars Hartnett as Cooper Abbott, who brings his daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to a concert by pop star Lady Raven, played by M. Night Shyamalan’s daughter, Saleka Night Shyamalan. After noticing a heavy police presence at the venue, Cooper learns that the concert is actually a trap designed to capture a serial killer known as “The Butcher,” whom authorities believe will be in attendance.
Collider Exclusive · Horror Survival Quiz Which Horror Villain Do You Have the Best Chance of Surviving? Jason Voorhees · Michael Myers · Freddy Krueger · Pennywise · Chucky
Five killers. Five completely different ways to die — if you’re not smart enough, fast enough, or self-aware enough to avoid it. Only one of them is the villain your particular set of instincts gives you a fighting chance against. Eight questions will figure out which one.
🏕️Jason
🔪Michael
💤Freddy
🎈Pennywise
🪆Chucky
01
Something feels wrong. You can’t explain it — you just know. What do you do? First instincts are the difference between the survivor and the first act casualty.
02
Where are you most likely to find yourself when things go wrong? Setting is everything in horror. Where you are determines which rules apply.
03
What is your most reliable survival asset? Every survivor has a quality the villain didn’t account for. What’s yours?
04
What kind of fear is hardest for you to fight through? Knowing your weakness is the first step to not dying because of it.
05
You’re with a group when things start going wrong. What’s your role? Horror movies are brutally clear about who survives group situations and who doesn’t.
06
What’s the horror movie mistake you’re most likely to make? Honest self-assessment is a survival skill. Denial is not.
07
What’s your best weapon against something that can’t be stopped by conventional means? Every horror villain has a weakness. The survivors are always the ones who find it.
08
It’s the final scene. You’re the last one standing. How did you make it? The final survivor always has a reason. What’s yours?
Your Survival Odds Have Been Calculated Your Best Chance Is Against…
Your instincts, your strengths, and your particular way of thinking under pressure point to one villain you actually have a fighting chance against. Everyone else — good luck.
Camp Crystal Lake · Friday the 13th
Jason Voorhees
Jason is relentless, but he is also predictable — and that is the gap you would exploit.
He moves in straight lines toward his target. He doesn’t strategise, doesn’t adapt, doesn’t outsmart. He simply pursues.
Your ability to keep moving, use the environment, and resist the panic that freezes most victims gives you a genuine edge.
The Crystal Lake survivors were always the ones who stopped running in circles and started thinking about terrain, water, and distance.
You think like that. Which means Jason, for all his indestructibility, would face someone who simply refused to be where he expected.
Haddonfield, Illinois · Halloween
Michael Myers
Michael watches before he moves. He is patient, methodical, and almost impossible to detect — until it’s too late for anyone who isn’t paying close enough attention.
But you are paying attention. You notice the shape in the window, the car parked slightly wrong, the silence where there should be sound.
Michael’s power lies in the invisibility of ordinary suburbia — the fact that nothing ever looks wrong until it already is.
Your spatial awareness and instinct to map every room, every exit, and every shadow before you need them is precisely the quality Laurie Strode had.
You are not a victim waiting to happen. You are someone who already suspects something is wrong — and acts on it.
Elm Street · A Nightmare on Elm Street
Freddy Krueger
Freddy wins by getting inside your head — using your own fears, your own memories, your own subconscious as weapons against you. That strategy requires a target who can be destabilised.
You are harder to destabilise than most. You’ve faced uncomfortable truths about yourself and you haven’t looked away.
The survivors on Elm Street were always the ones who understood what was happening and chose to face it rather than flee from it.
Freddy’s greatest weakness is that his power evaporates in the presence of someone who refuses to give him the fear he feeds on.
Your psychological resilience — the ability to stay grounded when reality itself becomes unreliable — is exactly the quality that keeps you alive here.
Derry, Maine · It
Pennywise
Pennywise is ancient, shapeshifting, and feeds on terror — but it has one critical vulnerability: it cannot function against someone who genuinely stops being afraid of it.
The Losers Club didn’t survive because they were braver than everyone else. They survived because they faced their fears together, and faced them honestly.
You ask the questions others avoid. You look directly at what frightens you rather than turning away.
That directness — the refusal to let fear fester in the dark — is Pennywise’s worst nightmare.
It chose the wrong target when it chose you. You are exactly the kind of person whose fear tastes like nothing at all.
Chicago · Child’s Play
Chucky
Chucky’s greatest advantage is that nobody takes him seriously until it’s already too late. He exploits the gap between how something looks and what it actually is.
You don’t have that gap. You take threats seriously regardless of how they present — and you never make the mistake of underestimating something because of its size or appearance.
Chucky relies on surprise, on the delay between recognition and response. You close that delay faster than almost anyone.
Your instinct to treat every unfamiliar thing with appropriate scepticism — rather than dismissing it because it seems absurd — is the exact quality that keeps you breathing.
Against Chucky, not laughing is already winning. You are very good at not laughing.
Is ‘Trap’ Worth Watching?
Since its release, Trap has received mixed reviews, generating a 56% critics’ score and a 64% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. It also received a C+ CinemaScore and a 2.6-star rating on Letterboxd. ScreenRant claimed that Trap had a good structure, despite the story losing focus on its main plot — How to trap a killer. Patrice Witherspoon also didn’t like how Trap ended. Meanwhile, CBR noted that Hartnett’s character was the “only one with dimensionality” and called out how this film was rigged in Cooper’s favor. It also claimed that the movie was made to “validate Saleka Shyamalan’s budding music career.” Other critics had similar sentiments, praising Hartnett’s performance, with some describing it as Saleka’s “concert movie.”
Collider’s Ross Bonaime gave Trap a score of 5/10 in his review. He praised Hartnett’s performance as a loving father who’s also a serial killer, and he showcased Shyamalan’s strengths as a filmmaker. However, he also noted that the director was unable to “build the tension” that this feature needed, and that silly choices brought the story down.
Trap is available to stream on HBO Max and Netflix. Follow Collider for more updates.
