Sundance ‘25: Rabbit Trap

In theory, creating an effective folk horror movie shouldn’t be too difficult; there’s a wealth of myth and lore to pull into making a film that both haunts and mystifies. But in practice, modern scary movies tend to fumble this easy bag with dull writing and worse plots. Writer-director Brit Chainey falls into that same camp with Rabbit Trap, his feature debut that premiered at Sundance Film Festival. The movie tries to capitalize on the wild and weird beauty of Wales to create a folk horror story with a strong emotional tenor, but clever visual tricks and an evocative setting can’t save Rabbit Trap from its own incoherent plot.

It’s the 1970s and married couple Darcy (Dev Patel) and Daphne (Rosy McEwen, who was excellent in indie drama Blue Jean) have just moved to a farmhouse in rural Wales. They spend their days making music, with Darcy going out into the countryside to record nature sounds for Daphne’s experimental electronic songs. They do the typical things young couples in love do in movies—take luxurious baths together in a clawfoot tub, slow dance in their kitchen at night—but Chainey hints at discord in their life, as Darcy deals with full-body night terrors and rebuffs Daphne’s attempts to understand what he’s haunted by. Daphne, meanwhile, faces creative blocks in her music-making until Darcy brings back a mysterious otherworldly sound recorded in a ring of toadstools.

Both Daphne and Darcy are painted with broad strokes: Daphne the capital-A artist who chafes at living a boring life, Darcy the one who grounds her, reminding her to eat when she’s spent all day wrapped up in her music. It’s hard to understand what, if anything, Chainey wants us to read into their relationship: does Darcy resent his supportive role in Daphne’s artistry? Does Daphne harbor doubts about married life with Darcy? But the world-building of Rabbit Trap almost makes up for these thinly outlined characters. The movie is filled with sweeping shots of forests and hills (filmed in northern England, not Wales) immediately bringing the audience into its world. Darcy and Daphne’s cottage, covered in analog synthesizers and theremins and vinyl records, is its own isolated world. And the sound design is on another level: as Darcy wanders through the wild, the sounds he encounters—from the wind to murmurations, raindrops and leaves rustling—are amplified in a way that completely immerses the audience.  

The vast emptiness of Rabbit Trap’s setting is emphasized by a sparse cast. After Darcy uncovers the mystical sound that re-sparks Daphne’s creative energy, the third and final character is revealed: a nameless teenage boy, played by 25-year-old Jade Croot with the same age-defying energy as Barry Keoghan in The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Daphne takes to the boy immediately, welcoming him into their home and encouraging Darcy to take him out on his recording ventures in the countryside. But the boy becomes increasingly wrapped up in their lives, at first as a sweet young neighbor and later as an obsessive intruder.

Croot’s rather ingenious portrayal of this new character—at times an object of sympathy and concern, at others a harbinger of horror—unfortunately coincides with the dissolution of the script. The dialogue, already stilted, becomes even more laughable. In terms of foreshadowing, the boy delivers eye roll-worthy background on “the Old Ones” in the woods, warning against disturbing the tylwyth teg who reside (wouldn’t you know) right in Daphne and Darcy’s neck of the woods. In a scene that Chainey obviously intends to be deeply philosophical, the boy asks where sound goes when it dies, and Darcy responds with what literally sounds like Merriam-Webster’s definition of “sound.” This amateurish script-writing detracts from the world Chainey has built, making it seem more pedestrian than it actually is. 

Instead of fleshing out the characters’ intentions, the storyline resorts to throwing a bunch of visual and textual motifs at the wall and seeing what sticks. Darcy’s nightmares are decidedly creepy, introducing an idea of the characters rotting in the same way that the nature surrounding them does. The eponymous rabbit trap pops up now and again, as do the fairytale toadstools. But these components of horror and folklore are underdeveloped and the meanings behind them—childhood trauma? a yearning for family?—so opaque as to be completely unintelligible.

The ambiguity of Chainey’s ideas might work in a more surreal story, but Rabbit Trap only toys with a dreamlike atmosphere. This makes it hard to overlook Daphne and Darcy’s total lack of curiosity about where the boy comes from, who his parents are, and even what his name is, questions that bog down the storyline even further. Without a fleshed out metaphor at the heart of the story, Rabbit Trap becomes little more than its haunting setting.