After Rose Byrne’s stress-inducing motherhood-is-hell panic attack If I Had Legs I’d Kick You premiered, 70s-set folk horror Rabbit Trap is providing yet more confirmation to Sundance attendees that children should be avoided. In writer-director Bryn Chainey’s patchy feature debut, his lead couple might not have a child of their own, but a mysterious local stranger would certainly disagree, forcing himself into their household, whether they like it or not.
For a while they do, sound recordist Darcy (Dev Patel) and alternative musician Daphne (Rosy McEwen), charmed and intrigued by the nameless kid (Jade Croot), an unusual and self-possessed boy eager to teach them more about the area. They moved to a remote Welsh cottage from London, both transfixed by the many sounds of nature, hoping it might lead to creative inspiration. Chainey is as fascinated as they are and it’s immediately easy to see why, the film’s ASMR immersion into the specific squishes, gusts and crunches of the countryside around them proving to be entirely transporting.
It doesn’t take long for us to suspect something sinister might be at play, even before the kid starts teaching them about the fine line between the real world and those of the fairies (cue grim flashbacks to last year’s hokey horror The Watchers) and how one should be careful not to disturb the Tylwyth Teg, mythological creatures from Welsh folklore. Delivering them a dead rabbit is also not the best sign.
But the earlier scenes, as the childless couple entertain an unknowable new addition to their house prove to be the most involving, the film toying with the formula of a domestic thriller. His inclusion in their lives causes questions to gently arise about why they’re not already parents, and for Darcy, whether he really should be? Disturbing nightmares and the implication of an unpleasant childhood imply that he might not see himself as the paternal type, a suggestion later on that he has a rot within him that he doesn’t want to share both sad and troubling.
Chainey is a little too stuck on the suggested though, his film slowly unravelling into alienating abstraction. Croot is almost too effectively creepy as the kid, reminiscent of a younger Barry Keoghan, that it doesn’t take long for you to question why they would continue to let him lay roots in their home and their relationship. After one aggressive and intensely annoying early morning interruption, which one would think might lead to a forced pause in their hangouts, the pair start acting like mindless teens in a slasher film, allowing a hand to guide them into clearly signposted trouble. It’s here that Chainey starts to lose us as events turn from supernatural dread into something more ambiguously magical and frustratingly incoherent. Patel and McEwen are both excellent throughout but they’re restrained by playing puddle-deep characters who we know very little about. This might be less problematic, if not ideal, when they’re facing the mechanics of a more conventional genre plot but when an out-there last act requires more emotional investment, everything dissolves.
Chainey is certainly skilled at distracting us, drowning his film in atmosphere and mood to offset the devolving half-baked hokum of his plot. But after being urged to listen closer, to try and hear for something more, we’re left with nothing. It’s a trap we can easily wriggle out of.
Rabbit Trap is screening at the Sundance film festival and is seeking distribution
