By George & Josh Bate
Horror and trauma have always gone hand-in-hand. It makes sense that horror, a genre designed to tap into our deepest fears and stresses, is often used to creatively and often metaphorically depict trauma, the most overwhelming and distressing manifestation of stress. However, after decades of horror movies spinning some kind of allegorical tale about trauma, the horror and trauma bond has become a bit stale, requiring contemporary films that do explore this bond to be particularly gripping or noteworthy to stand out. Unfortunately, gripping and noteworthy poorly describe Rabbit Trap, a new slow burn, folk horror film unable to grow beyond its initial intrigue with anything meaningful or chilling to add to trauma-focused horror films.
Marking the feature debut of writer/director Bryn Chainey, Rabbit Trap takes place in the 1970s and follows Darcy (Dev Patel) and Daphne (Rosy McEwen), a married couple and experimental music duo who have relocated to an isolated cottage in the Welsh countryside in search for creative inspiration. While recording all sorts of sounds in nature as material for their music, Darcy comes across a strange, unidentifiable frequency, which leads him to an ominous circle of mushrooms in the woods. Soon after, a mysterious local child (Jade Croot) appears at the Davenports’ cottage and begins to ingratiate himself with the couple, setting off a journey that exposes Darcy and Daphne’s deepest vulnerabilities.
Rabbit Trap adopts a slow, methodical pacing that fosters an initial sense of intrigue before becoming tiring and even boring. The beginning of the film is devoid of overt horror, with the exception of a glimpse at a harrowing nightmare Darcy experiences, instead creating an atmosphere with its myriad of acoustic sounds and picturesque setting. Wielding a boom mic on various wanders around their cottage, Darcy uses analog audio equipment to record sounds in their environment, whether it be the dripping of water into a bucket or steps crunching on wet grass, that may be used for Daphne’s experimental music. Even though nothing moves the narrative forward for quite some time, there is a disquieting sense that something ominous is around the corner, which, in addition to the unsettlingly cozy atmosphere, makes for an intriguing start.
Eventually, the ominous arrives as Darcy’s chance encounter with a mysterious circle of mushrooms is followed by the introduction of an even more mysterious child. The child, who goes unnamed in the film, is a walking mystery, in every sense of the word. Although referred to with he/him pronouns, the child’s actual gender remains unclear. Their age is also similarly elusive, as they appear to be young in some ways and ancient in others, while even referring to themself as being older on the inside than the outside at one point. The child’s introduction into the story serves as the instigating incident that sparks the film’s conflict, although this conflict becomes muddled in confusing folk lore and even more confusing handling of various themes.
The conflict that ensues takes plenty of time to cascade into something more threatening. The anonymous child certainly evokes suspicion, at least among the audience, in speaking about local folk lore, fairies, and the like. Puzzingly though, Darcy and Daphne are completely and almost comically oblivious to how suspicious the child is, especially as they begin to encroach upon the boundaries of their household. The most apt comparisons for this core element of the film are probably Darren Aronofsky’s Mother! or Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer, two films that feature a character or characters who slowly seep themselves into a seemingly quaint household. Croot, who plays the child, even resembles Barry Keoghan in some ways, making the comparison to The Killing of a Sacred Deer all the more apparent.
However, unlike Aronofsky and Lanthimos’ films, writer/director Bryn Chainey fails to couple his uncomfortable intruder story with interesting subtext. Dev Patel’s Darcy is plagued by paralyzing nightmares that immediately scream sexual trauma. Playing subtly disturbed so well, Patel ensures that the audience knows Darcy is troubled by something, which the all-too-obvious nightmare sequences shed light on too soon. Then there’s the question of having children, a topic Darcy and Daphne never openly discuss in the film. The anonymous child, however, does pose this question and, over time, becomes intrusive in the ways in which they take on the de facto child role in the Davenport family. Then, in addition to childhood sexual trauma and the possibility of having children, the film is seeped in overarching Welsh folk lore about fairies, tylwyth teg, and other eerie traditions and stories.
Albeit in rather dull fashion, Chainey manages to hold the film together, juggling these three lofty ideas at once, until an ending that woefully misses the mark. The conflict reaches a relative peak of intensity before dissipating almost immediately, giving way to a final 15-20 minutes that will likely lose most moviegoers’ investment in the characters and story. Abstraction in horror cinema is commonplace and can work extraordinarily well (look no further than David Lynch, who is among our favorite filmmakers and built an entire career around extremely abstract and unusual films). But the abstract wrap-up to Rabbit Trap doesn’t work nearly as well as similar abstractions are handled by Lynch and other filmmakers. The disparate parts of the aforementioned lofty ideas fail to coalesce into anything moderately interpretable and, more damningly, anything moderately of interest. One can piece together, in part, what Chainey was generally aiming for with the combination of Welsh folk lore, sexual trauma, and desire to have children, but the culmination of all these ideas is far too muddled and frustrating.
As a result, Rabbit Trap leaves the viewer feeling uncomfortable and bothered. After a more intriguing start, the slow journey to get to the flawed ending proves laborious and is neither emotional nor scary. The final payoff, in turn, if one is still invested in the story at this point, feels unearned and unintelligible to the point of losing any and all impact it may have had.
VERDICT: 4/10
Marking the feature debut of writer/director Bryn Chainey, Rabbit Trap is the latest in a decades-long run of horror films to explore trauma through subtext and imagery, but fails to develop beyond an initial sense of intrigue into anything emotional or frightening. A relatively stronger start establishes a disquieting, picturesque atmosphere that plays nicely with the characters’ focus on designing experimental, environmentally-based music. With shades of Darren Aronofsky’s Mother! or Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer, an uncomfortable intruder conflict eventually emerges, but, unlike those films, lacks the cohesiveness of subtext necessary to make the discomfort truly horrifying or emotionally resonant. The film juggles lofty ideas/themes of childhood sexual trauma, the desire to have children, and all sorts of Welsh folk lore that fail to coalesce into anything meaningful or interesting upon an overly abstract, muddled, and uninterpretable ending that woefully misses the mark. In watching Rabbit Trap, it is clear that Chainey has a unique ability to manipulate sound design and has an abundance of intriguing ideas he is interested in exploring. Unfortunately, these ideas frustratingly fail to come together and make Rabbit Trap yet another misfired attempt at exploring trauma in the context of contemporary horror cinema.