MANILA, Philippines — Director M. Night Shyamalan has several films under his belt, but his upcoming feature “Trap” is particularly special as it is the acting debut of his eldest daughter Saleka.
The film stars Josh Hartnett as a serial killer known as The Butcher who accompanies his daughter to a concert, which he realizes is a trap set by police to catch him.
The pop star whose concert is the film’s setting is played by Saleka, a professional singer-songwriter with a studio album to her name and previously released the song “Remain” in M. Night’s 2021 film “Old.”
M. Night also directed the music video for Saleka’s song “The Sky Cries,” but “Trap” is definitely their biggest collaboration yet as Saleka wrote 14 songs for the film’s soundtrack.
“[‘Trap’] started with me and Saleka thinking about doing a music movie together that would also function as a thriller. I started to wonder, ‘Could we do a thriller about music?’,” M. Night said in an interview.
“We started building on that… so we follow a father and daughter to the concert, and we keep mixing together the concert and the dark things happening there,” he added.
The creation of Saleka’s character Lady Raven began with the artist writing, producing, and recording an album, which for M. Night is an amazing thing to witness an artist do something inspired.
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“I think of her as an artist who’s fierce and uncorrupted. I look at my daughters and think that as they’re learning their craft and battling their demons, the one thing they’re not compromising is authenticity. They’re teaching me that again,” the filmmaker said.
M. Night explained that as soon as people have success, there is an unconscious want to be accepted that they lose sight of oneself, and because of that, his daughters are teaching him authenticity again.
He told Saleka, “This is who I think this fictional character is. She feels this way to her audience. This is who loves her, and why. This is her latest album. Can you write with this angle on this character?”
The father and daughter continued the discussions and Saleka would write one song after another, something that made M. Night surprised but happy each time.
Saleka similarly praised her father because for her, filmmaking is one of the purest things a person could have a passion for, and a key theme in his movies is positivity amid darkness.
“What’s interesting to me is that he tells such dark stories, because I think he is such a positive person. You see that positivity in the context of these dark situations, and you know that he thinks the universe is good,” she said.
The singer ended by saying how safe she felt on set because of her father’s direction, “It makes a lot of people feel happy and joyous to be here. It’s like we’re living the dream. He feels that and so we remember that every day.”
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