‘Rabbit Trap’: Sundance Review

Dir: Bryn Chainey. UK. 2025. 88 minutes.

These raised on folklore about foundlings and fairies will discover a lot to take pleasure in on this debut from Bryn Chainey. The British director marries Welsh mythology to extra fashionable concepts about processing trauma, utilizing sound to create a wierd and unsettling psychological temper piece moderately than an out-and-out horror. The result’s engagingly enigmatic if slight by way of plot and light-weight on chills.

Enigmatic

Whereas the British and Irish people horror market is an more and more crowded one, the very fact Rabbit Lure was co-produced by Elijah Wooden’s Spectrevision plus the presence of Dev Patel and Display Star of Tomorrow Rosy McEwen (Blue Jean) within the forged might assist it be a focus for distributors following its premiere in Sundance’s Midnight strand.

It’s 1976 and experimental electro musician Daphne (McEwen) and her husband Darcy (Patel) have moved to rural Wales (performed with historic and wild magnificence by North Yorkshire). There she spends her days creating sounds in a makeshift music lab, full with oscilloscope and theremin. “Along with your eyes you enter the world,” she tells her husband, “Along with your ears, it enters you”. There are loads of robust and evocative traces like this within the script, however the character drawing is much less profitable, with Chainey relying closely on his forged to carry house the psychological bacon.

Darcy is Daphne’s helpmate, wandering the moors and woodland recording ambient sounds for her to make use of in her work. An early placing picture reveals a murmuration of birds creating waves within the sky like a pure oscilloscope as Darcy captures their sound beneath. After darkish, nevertheless, Darcy produces eerie noises of his personal as evening terrors see him visited by a monstrous determine (Nicholas Sampson).

Although the soundscape created by composer Lucrecia Dalt and sound designer Graham Reznick is a wealthy one, with its electro bleeps and rumbles married to extra pure ambient sounds, it’s the visuals which might be often extra arresting because of the detailed manufacturing design from Lucie Purple.

When, sooner or later, Darcy begins to file a wierd noise out within the woodland, he stumbles right into a fairy circle of mushrooms. Later after, he performs the music to Daphne, the visuals turn out to be as distorted because the sound, which seems to set off the looks of an androgynous unnamed teenager (Jade Croot). There’s one thing wild and ethereal about this little one, who rapidly ingratiates himself into the couple’s lives.

He talks of the Welsh fairies – the tylwyth teg – and people within the learn about their usually treacherous dealings with people will instantly be cautious. Although initially Daphne and Darcy really feel protecting of the teenager – there’s little doubt he’s filling a niche of some kind, though specifics are left unstated – his more and more possessive perspective in direction of Daphne begins to trigger friction. Croot’s watchful supply turns into unsettling, with the kid’s repeated query, “are you petrified of me?” taking up an more and more unnerving vibe.

There’s a rabbit lure set by the kid however Chainey is extra involved with the psychological snares that Darcy is caught up in. Patel sells his broken character properly and the chemistry between him and McEwen is impressively charged. The plot, nevertheless, is torn between the unusual little one and Darcy’s backstory, with the 2 muddling alongside collectively moderately than coalescing. The pacing can also be uneven, arriving in matches and begins, in order that developments occur in a rush, notably within the remaining act, when the pure world begins to make itself felt in more and more unnatural methods.

Chainey doesn’t need to make us soar or frighten us away. As a substitute he needs to ask us into the wealthy and unusual world he has created, and audiences hungry for immersive thriller that defies decision would be the most probably to step willingly into his lure.