Hartnett plays a father who takes his daughter to a concert to see her favorite music star, but it turns into a dangerous situation with Hartnett's character feeling like he's about to be arrested.
"It's so fun to watch this with an audience. It's meant to kind of give you permission from the very first frame to kind of say, 'Hey, it's OK to laugh,'" Shyamalan said. "I know there's gonna be a lot of dark things here, but you can laugh and the stakes will be there. And they're going to surprise you."
Hartnett says he was drawn to the role because he likes to task risks.
"I like to push the envelope. And I think he saw in me someone who would be a partner in creating a character that is not like other characters that are out there," Hartnett said. "The audience's job is supposed to be just to enjoy this ride, which is just looking at a thriller from a completely different standpoint. It's absurd, and it's also kind of amazing and fun and weird."
"Trap" also features the director's daughter, Saleka. She not only plays the big music star in the movie, she also wrote and produced that music, collaborating on this film with her dad.
"It was a concept that we came up with together and kind of had been talking about for many years, this idea of bringing music and film together in a way that felt like us," Saleka said. "Obviously, coming from Indian culture and Bollywood films and then, you know, also one of our favorite films is 'Purple Rain.' And so, it was just a conversation we had over a while of how we could do this ourselves, and let's come up with something that we can make together as a father-daughter collaboration."
"Trap" is rated PG-13 and is in theaters Aug. 2.