There is no microphone in the world strong enough to pick up a person’s deepest secrets, and yet every time Darcy (a compulsively anxious Dev Patel) takes his audio equipment to wander around the pristine Welsh countryside, it’s as if the planet is speaking to him things he could never hope to notice with the naked ear – ancient (and sinister) secrets that have been waiting centuries on end for someone to hear their confessions.
Such things are certainly not what Darcy is trying to find with the field recordings he makes for his wife Daphne (“Blue jeans“Breakout Rose McEwan, down-to-earth and excellent), an experimental musician who interpolates the flutter of grackles and the drum of the earth into percussive nature music that no one wants to buy in 1976. But that’s what happens when you try to communicate with nature: Much as Darcy and Daphne might think they is capturing The subliminal sounds of the forest surrounding their new cabin, it would be more accurate to say they are receiving them.
“With your eyes you enter the world,” someone says. “With your ears the world enters you.” So Begins Bryn Chainey’s “Rabbit trap“A vague but effectively unsettling record of trippy horror about what happens when the world refuses to leave. As nature begins to resonate somewhere deep in your bones, and the vibrations eventually grow so loud that Darcy and Daphne are forced to perceive even the parts of themselves they’ve spent their entire lives trying to silence.
It proves difficult to pin down exactly what that means, and it only gets harder as Chacey’s sure-handed but increasingly hallucinogenic debut goes off the deep end during its final acts, but “”Rabbit trap“Is nothing if not upfront about the rules of the game. Sure, the film eventually stumbles upon a host of recognizable genre signifiers (an ominous circle of mushrooms, a row of bushes warding off local spirits, a puddle that shudders while the rest of the world lies still, etc.), but only after It sets its terms on a more elementary level.
Rather than jump scares, which are too viscerally artificial to make sense in this context, Chainey would prefer to whisk us away with musings about the mysteries of “nature’s music,” and how it compels us to listen for answers beyond the shallow depths of human failings as fear and shame ( film Opens with the lingering image of a dancing sine wave, as if instructing us to look at whatever comes with our ears). Darcy suffers from night terrors that keep the audience tense with anticipation, but “Rabbit Trap” is less interested in the slimy tree monster that accompanies them – or the yellow foam that erupts from the cabin walls every time he appears – than it is in the sounds of the hero’s panicked breathing. It’s less interested in the emotional dynamic between Darcy and his wife than in how the field recordings they bring home from the woods seem to strip Daphne of her gender when she hears them.
It’s just as well, as the individual self loathing these characters hold in their guts is much stronger than any of the resentments they may have for each other (unspecified as all Of these things persist all the time), but—as part of another grounding of the horror trope—the scene where this hyperphotogenic couple goes wild on each other next to Daphne’s flimsy studio equipment is followed by a serious comeuppance. In this case: The sudden appearance of a needy but idle kid who looks like a 12-year-old boy, played by a 12-year-old girl (the amazing jade croot and delivering a hideously hollow performance reminiscent of Barry Keoghan in “The Killing of a sacred deer”) and serves as a 1,200-year-old piece of folklore.
We don’t know if Darcy and Daphne wanted a child (Darcy punctuates the question when asked), but nature takes its course one way or another. We also don’t know the child’s name, where he came from or what happened to his parents. Darcy and Daphne hardly think to ask. Logic struggles to get a word in Edgewise. After all, few things are more unnecessary than a sound without a source, especially when that sound doesn’t go away. When it starts calling you “mom” and snickers as it leads you on a winding track to where the old people live on the other side of the quarry.
Frustrating as it can be to see such a thrilling film get so high on its own supply (the final act is unpleasant to the point that it can only be understood by the logic of a fable), Chahey’s aggressive refusal to engage with the details of Darcy’s inner ” rat” or to unpack Daphne’s artistic insecurities allows this humble three-hander to remain appealingly immune to the “it’s all trauma” approach that has made so much of modern horror feels like a form of collective psychotherapy. Equal parts Ben Wheatley’s “In the Earth” and Jerzy Skolomowski’s “The Shout,” “Rabbit Trap” is the kind of experience better explained by certain mushrooms than even the most detailed internet explainer. It’s definitely the kind of experience best enjoyed by accepting these terms as soon as you can.
CHAMANEY does what he can to get you on his wavelength. The situation at the heart of the film goes from bad to worse along a linear trajectory, but the horror freak-out promised by its spare moments never quite fails to materialize. The jolts never come because sharp sounds would only get in the way of a film that would rather listen to the subtle dissonance that forms between humans and their nature – a film that becomes “scary” when it threatens to unite the two by cutting through Noise which Darcy and Daphne use to silence the parts of themselves they are afraid to hear.
The most pointed moment of Chacey’s (very reserve, very Ambiguous) script could be the scene where Darcy locks the child out of the cabin after saying he could “come back any time.” It is an extremely literal example of an idea that “rabbit trap” digs into until it digs a hole right through the floorboards: words are lies that we carve out of noise, but the truths they can be allowed to hide not only Peter out into nothingness. “What happens when a sound dies?”, asks the child. “Where is it going?” Darcy is under the impression that it dissolves into molecules, but the child offers another explanation. “Sound is a ghost,” he says, “and your body is the house it haunts. When you hear a sound, you become the sound.” And when you become the sound, it can only be silenced at your peril.
Grade: B-
“Rabbit Trap” premiered in 2025 Sundance Film festival. It is currently seeking US distribution.
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