Josh Hartnett didn’t have to look far for inspiration when it came to playing his latest cold-blooded character.
The actor explained that he modeled his serial killer role in M. Night Shyamalan‘s Trap after certain “people in our business” as he revealed how he and the director made audiences empathize with the character.
“Night being Night, he wants to give the audience a new experience,” Hartnett told Entertainment Weekly. ‘He’s been doing this his entire career. He’ll take a ghost story and tell it from the point of view of the ghost. He’ll take an alien invasion story and not really show the aliens. So this one is like a throwback thriller in a contained space from the perspective of the antagonist. It’s like Die Hard from Hans Gruber’s perspective.”
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Trap follows Cooper (Hartnett), a father taking his daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to a massive concert, where police have set up a sting operation to take down The Butcher, the name coined for Cooper’s homicidal activities.
“There are a lot of CEOs, politicians, people in our business… a lot of people who are at the top,” Hartnett said of his inspiration. “They don’t mind stepping over people or doing horrible things to get where they’re going, and not having any empathy is a pretty big sign of being a psychopath. Whether or not you’re murdering people, I’ve met people like this, you know what I mean? So it was easy to take it all a step further, make it a little bolder, and make his cover so intense.”
Shyamalan explained that because he was making the movie “from the killer’s point of view,” he wanted to be “very careful.”
“What is he feeling or not feeling?” said Shyamalan. “He’s an interesting character to be with because he’s coming alive when things get scary. He gets more playful when things are getting tighter. But with the close-ups, you show him starting to panic. As it goes, our close-ups get tighter and tighter, and it starts to become a nightmare.”
After premiering on Friday, Trap is projected to open to a $15.5-$16.5 million weekend.
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