Dev Patel leads Sundance Folk Horror Stories
In the Welsh folk horror “Rabbit Trap,” debut director Bryn Chainey creates an unsettling acoustic atmosphere and channels his three actors into powerful performances. But these flourishes are a messy body of work that only coasts on its interpretability. While symbolism is often present in the story, its dramatic mechanics and aesthetics never quite coalesce into anything appropriately visceral, spiritual, or meaningful.
The film opened at Sundance and has plenty of intrigue ahead. Married couple Darcy (Dev Patel) and Daphne (Rosy McEwen) live in the Welsh countryside. The year was 1976, and their house was filled, wall to wall, with analog audio equipment. Daphne uses it to create her avant-garde music, and while on a meandering ramble, his boom mic gives birth to boisterous Darcy records. But when a strange signal unexplained draws Daphne to her music.
Even those unfamiliar with the Welsh folktale will likely pick up on the early premise, partly because of the recording that serves as the prologue to the film, but also because of the way Crot tries to befriend the couple. , this is really creepy. Her characters – whose names never seem to be asked, but they call them boys – may have something to do with Fairyor the Welsh folk fairies who created fairy circles and coveted children, leaving the transformative in their place. The key wrinkle, however, is that Daphne and Darcy have no children, inverting what Klute's boy characters represent for them.
The character walks a fine line between childish and edgy, but he quickly crosses the line when he playfully broaches the topic of pretending to be his mother. The couple never openly discussed having children (or if that was in their future), but parental anxiety looms large in much of the story. Darcy's paralyzing nightmares about his father turn him into a husk of sleepless tendencies. Daphne's calmness betrays a subdued melancholy, as if there's something missing in her life – and she might even be finding it through art. The duo are personable and have a lovely romantic dynamic, but it immediately proves fragile once Clott enters the fray, bringing an otherworldly energy that could channel Barry Keoghan ) withdrawn, monotonous charm in “Killing the Sacred Deer.”
The “rabbit trap” never came out and explains the lingering hole at the center of Daphne and Darcy's marriage. As such, it is exposed to interpretations of whether the mysterious boy might be some spiritual embodiment of a phantom future somewhere in the past, standing among the children the couple may have lost or decided they would never have. Then again, maybe even playing off this interpretation might have helped the film's drama come together more precisely, especially once the boys started imposing themselves on them.
While the aforementioned scene in which Darcy collects ambient sounds is worthy of introduction (“Color Upstream”), the film's acoustic curiosities rarely translate visually. For example, the boy is a rabbit catcher who insists on using his catch as a stand-in for his new parents whether they like it or not. They're not too happy about it, but the blood and bones of it all are never unsettling, and it's rare that a movie inserts some creepy moments, or even Daphne or Darcy's reaction work – or even mildly so. discomfort. Except for a little, the story is suggested by mundane suggestions rather than frightening possibilities.
The film's polyphonic introduction also doesn't hold up. Its unique aural qualities (and the pair's acoustic fixation) quickly fell by the wayside, making its premise feel perfunctory. For a film in which experimental music (a fragmented construction of nature, twists and bastards) plays such a central role, “Rabbit Trip”'s overall approach is disappointingly straightforward and surprisingly literal. , despite its third transformation into magic, the realm of symbols.
Unfortunately, the results involve logistical means of achieving meaning. The film's barely hidden secrets float just below the surface of the pool without ripples – no meaningful texture to complicate it or obscure its subject, or to turn its reveal into an emotionally driven experience.