Whisper House Press

Film Title: Rabbit Trap

Director: Bryn Chainey

Screenwriter: Bryn Chainey

Production Companies: SpectreVision, Align, Bankside Films

Release Date (USA, Sundance): January 24, 2025

Capone’s Rating: 3.5⭐ out of 5⭐

Folk horror enters the home in Bryn Chainey’s Rabbit Trap, an atmospheric bit of phantasmagoria that debuted at Sundance two weeks ago. Ethereal sounds, environmental patterns, and body-centric motifs are the palette from which the creator settles us, holds us, and then drops us.

As usual for this festival, I knew very little about this film when I walked into Broadway Theaters for its Salt Lake City debut two days after its premiere uphill in frenetic Park City.

At its opening, Daphne (Rosy McEwan) and Darcy (Dev Patel, who might win a Frank Zappa lookalike competition) have made a quiet life for themselves in the Welsh countryside. They merely cohabitate, at first, in a relationship characterized by its cool reserve, and they have no obvious neighbors. The pair work together on Daphne’s experimental music, their cottage surrounded by dark forest where fay might lurk and open fields are marked by singular trees or dotted with hopscotch boulders. Darcy’s mission is to scour their environs for sounds that might be mixed into Daphne’s art—birds, winds, grasses… We get the sense that these two don’t tell each other very much but that Patel’s character Darcy is particularly withdrawn, not telling his potential life partner very much at all about his interior life. We might feel, from their exchanges, that either one is free to leave at any point, and not much would be lost. This changes for both of them through acts two and three

It’s into this droll ambience (which includes Darcy and Daphne’s relationship) that Jade Croot’s character, an unnamed child, appears—much as might a rabbit hopping through and hiding among nearby tall grasses. The child is dirty, hints vaguely at residing far from the couple’s home, and seems glad to have walking and talking companions. At least one of the child’s parents is deceased, and Croot’s character catches rabbits for food, offering thanks to each one for its sacrifice. Darcy, at first, takes more to the child than does Daphne, who remains focused on her work. At one moment, the child tells Darcy something like: “Trapping rabbits is easy; you just have to find out what it wants.”

Leaving aside any spoilers, let’s offer that act three takes turns, at first threatening, then terrifying, and then bizarre—this latter element reminiscent of Jeff VanderMeer’s ecological horror. The admixture of this element combined with folk horror spurs one to think: Annihilation (VanderMeer) meets The Watchers (A.M. Shine). The third act’s surrealistic elements drag the audience, along with the characters, to wonder what’s real and what’s imagined.

Those looking for more literal tales of family drama need not apply here; this author’s spouse left the theater feeling worn and somewhat depressed, but without a clear source in a film scene or sequence—“It’s a vibe,” we decided. On the other hand, moviegoers looking for a filmmaking style as cerebral and experimental as Daphne’s electronic music might well find a home.

Three point five stars out of five for this directorial debut.