SUNDANCE: ‘Rabbit Trap’ Is A Convoluted But Beautiful Folk Horror

Rabbit Trap (2025) is writer and director Bryn Chainey‘s debut film. With only a cast of three, Dev Patel (Monkey Man), Rosy McEwen (Apartment 7A), and Jade Croot (The Witcher), the scenery, the myth, and the home become critical narrative vehicles. Rabbit Trap is a folk horror story that deals more with discomfort than with scares.

In the film, Daphne (McEwen) and Darcy Davenport (Patel) have left London and moved to a remote cottage in Wales. A musician and her husband, the two seem to be the only people for acres in event direction. As Daphne attempts to connect to the oldest power in the world, sound, Darcy walks through the remote forests and fields to capture the sounds of the world to help Darcy in her art. With music cascading out of the house, their music disturbs local ancient folk magic, bringing a nameless child who refuses to leave to their doorstep.

While the three of them’s relationship is the key focus of the film, the first act of Rabbit Trap paints the story of a difficult marriage. Despite the passion and intimacy, something between Daphne and Darcy seems to be causing friction. Not the kind of friction that immediately causes a fire to erupt, but one that feels unintentional and more indicative of trauma than anything else.

When the rabbit trapper appears, they are offered a reprieve. They begin to spend more and more time together. Daphne is struck by inspiration, and maternal love begins to brew. But for Darcy, as the child becomes closer, he pulls farther and farther back. Exploring this wrought relationship is expertly navigated by the actors, even if the script leaves gaps in understanding how close they’ve become.

Jade Croot delivers a standout performance, bringing innocence and menace in one go.

Jade Croot’s performance as the nameless rabbit trapper is the film’s best offering to the audience. Her performance as the androgynous and ageless child is revelatory. The ways that innocence morphs, her longing for a family becomes insidious, and ultimately, how she can turn on her fear and resentment on a dime is the right kind of menacing. The type that is drowned in sincerity and desperation for companionship that the innocence of it all triggers your need to take care of them.

For Dev Patel’s Darcy, his internal struggle to let the rabbit trapper stay is apparently from nearly the beginning. Though he is forward and accepting at first, the crushing weight of becoming a parental figure becomes too much to bear. His anger and pain exude, and Patel’s ability to move everything forward with his physicality is on display. His face shows a map of his pain, but the destination is smudged, leaving the audience constantly questioning what is eating him from the inside.

Darcy is compelling. He is frustrated and hurt, but the film’s largest sin is that the rot we are told is spreading within him is never truly explored. While the choice to have him be silent to the audience is only able to convey to Daphne through a recording, leaving the audience in the dark is frustrating. Maybe we are meant to map our trauma onto Darcy, but when there isn’t even an outline of it, we don’t know where to place it. Ambiguity is an artful way to meet your audience, but here, it’s missed.

Director Bryn Chainey has crafted a timeless film. Set in 1976, nothing about this folktale feels out of place in any decade. Is the audio equipment old because they’re eccentric? Is it new for the times? Factor in the rabbit trapper’s consistent ageless identity and the film’s whimsy is accentuated by its ability to be plucked from time.

But Rabbit Trap (2025) is deeply flawed, buckling under its attention to beauty. 

Rabbit Trap is not technically a long movie, clocking in at 97 minutes. But you feel every minute of it, especially as the film’s folklore begins to repeat in convoluted layers. It is like wading through quicksand to get to them. Despite the film’s stellar performances and talent on display, Rabbit Trap is burdened by its effort to make everything be seen.

The mysteries of faerie folklore don’t maintain themselves, and when the layer of trauma gets added on like a thick paste in the last act, it’s hard to carve out a concise message. Instead, Bryn Chainey buries his work in beauty and tasks the audience with making an effort to uncover it without any promise of payoff. Chainey is focused on exploring larger and grander visuals throughout the film, so much so that the narrative purpose gets lost.

Faerie circles are beautiful, and they’ve been fertile ground for folk horror. With so much established in the annals of horror history, it shouldn’t take much to help you understand them. Even with an expository introduction to Rabbit Trap, there is still so much that feels unknown while watching the film, which makes it easy to feel lost throughout the film. But where it lacks cohesive myth-building for the audience, it makes up for it with beauty and thoughtful acting.

Rabbit Trap is a film that you’re happy to see, but you won’t be rushing to see it again. The film ultimately loses itself in style over substance, but Dev Patel and Jade Croot are folk horror standouts. Beyond that, this Welsh faerie tale’s specificity and pace make it hard to recommend to everyone. Still, under its surface, if you let yourself sink into it, you can see the ambition and the tenderness in Rabbit Trap that makes me extremely interested to see Bryn Chainey’s next film.

Rabbit Trap (2025) premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Fest.