“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 […]
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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.
