“With your eyes, you enter the world. With your ears, the world enters you,” an ethereal voice begins, followed by a sonic sensory assault that trips the power in an isolated Welsh countryside cottage. The aural and visual interpretation of sound in the introduction of writer/director Bryn Chainey’s feature debut, Rabbit Trap, signals an innovative new take on Celtic folk horror ahead. Instead, sound becomes less and less of a focal point as Chainey leans into cryptic Fae folklore and oblique storytelling.
The couple responsible for the opening’s cottage-shaking sensory assault is married couple Darcy (Dev Patel) and Daphne (Rose McEwen). The pair recently purchased the home to further their creative pursuits. Darcy is a sound recordist who spends his days roaming the countryside collecting nature audio with his boom mic. Daphne then uses his recordings to create her niche style of music. But in opening themselves up to listening to the land, they unwittingly become receivers of something otherworldly. Darcy’s recorder picks up strange, unexplainable sounds and whispers, drawing him unaware into a fairy circle. Soon after, a mysterious child (Jade Croot) shows up at their home, drawn to their sound.
Naturally, things only get stranger from there, but those with even passing genre savvy can guess the dilemma that Darcy and Daphne have stumbled into. It’s here where Chainey all but demands a hefty suspension of disbelief. Referred to as a boy, the couple only ask fleetingly for a name but never seem to register that the mysterious child has evaded answering anything about themselves. There’s never an inquiry about where the child lives; vast bucolic landscapes give no indicator of a single neighbor within miles. Croot channels Barry Keoghan, infusing her character with a discomforting eagerness to please and a warm curiosity, and plies the couple with affection, gifts, and knowledge that’s peppered with peculiar, prying questions that should set off alarm bells.
Chainey crafts a beguiling, cryptic voyage that only grows more abstract the further it gets. Rabbit Trap constantly dances around an unspoken rift between Darcy and Daphne, using Darcy’s ongoing night terrors or moments of reflection on Daphne’s career to offer enough kernels for audiences to fill in their own blanks; Chainey refuses to ever provide any concrete answers. Whether that rift is what allows the strange child to insert itself into their lives or simply folk magic, that too remains shrouded behind intentionally vague, mood-driven storytelling. By the film’s conclusion, we’ve still barely learned who any of these characters are.
It’s that constant sense of evasiveness that dulls any tension or atmospheric chills; Rabbit Trap is less folk horror and more beguiling folk tale. While Chainey struggles to elicit any sense of urgency or cohesive narrative, he crafts a handsomely made film shot with primordial beauty. The sound design is as enchanting as the mystical deep woods, washed in vibrant emerald greens. Patel earns easy empathy as the deeply nervous Darcy, the more cautious and broken of the couple. McEwen infuses Daphne with an earthiness that makes her at home in this setting in ways that scare Darcy. All of which highlights the vast potential in this feature debut, just one that perhaps needed more finessing.
As stunning and enchanting as Rabbit Trap can be, atmospherics only go so far in a rather straightforward story that aims to obscure its simplicity through folk horror signifiers, Croot’s cryptic dialogue, and an almost disinterest in its central pair. An off-the-rails third act that only further obfuscates what, exactly, audiences are meant to take away from this journey outside of loosely defined parenting fears. There’s no question that Chainey is a talented filmmaker, but Rabbit Trap gets so caught up in the stunning, poetic details that the larger picture becomes inscrutable and ineffective.
Rabbit Trap made its world premiere at Sundance.