Movie Review: RABBIT TRAP

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: September 12th, 2025 / 01:25 AM

RABBIT TRAP movie poster | ©2025 Magnet Releasing

Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Dev Patel, Rosy McEwen, Jade Croot, Nicholas Sampson
Writer: Bryn Chainey
Director: Bryn Chainey
Distributor: Magnet Releasing
Release Date: September 12, 2025

RABBIT TRAP is being described as “folk horror.” That’s arguably a misclassification. It is more precisely a near-modern-day fairytale, propelled by folklore and a sense of wonder about magic, nature, and our senses.

The film starts by telling us, “The Shadow has been gifted many names. Goblin, demon, fairy. Your forgotten child.” It goes on to say that nature provides music.

To illustrate this, we see a man, who we will soon learn is Darcy Davenport (Dev Patel), standing out in a field with sound equipment, recording an enormous flock of birds as the swirl in geometric patterns in the sky above.

We then see a woman, Darcy’s wife Daphne (Rosy McEwen), being emotionally moved by the sonic vibrations in an old-school sound studio – until the power abruptly goes out.

A title informs us that we’re in Cymru (better known as Wales, U.K. – the film was primarily shot in Yorkshire) and it’s 1976.

Daphne and Darcy have moved from London to an isolated country house here to record the sounds of nature, both animal and elemental. Daphne is a music star taking a hiatus; Darcy is a sound engineer. Their marriage is happy and intimate, disturbed mainly by Darcy’s recurring nightmares of a shadow man looming over him. These are severe enough that Daphne records Darcy as he sleeps, hoping that something he murmurs will enable him to identify what causes his night terrors.

One day, Darcy sees a human figure in the field outside the house. He gives chase and tackles the person, only to discover this is a child (Jade Croot). The child – Darcy and Daphne come to refer to the person as “he,” albeit the child is androgynous (and performer Croot is a young woman) – claims to be local, and certainly knows a lot about the area, even though it’s impossible to tell where he might live.

The child is uncannily drawn to Daphne, who responds with affection. Darcy is more wary.

RABBIT TRAP both does and does not go where we might expect. Thanks to writer/director Bryn Chainey’s vision, supported by Lucie Red’s magnificent production design, almost everything here can be viewed in multiple ways – as simply remarkable forest growth, or as ancient mythic imagery come to life. Daphne and Darcy both long to immerse themselves in this dual world, even though they aren’t quite sure how to interpret either this desire or what they’re experiencing.

The performances are outstanding. McEwen has a core of power and warmth that makes it easy to understand why the child seeks out Daphne. At the same time, McEwen is expressive when Daphne is wracked by anguish. Patel gives Darcy a gentleness, inquisitiveness and underlying sorrow that serve him well. Crood is becomingly otherworldly while still plausible as a Welsh child who has a desperate urgency in everything done and said.

RABBIT TRAP has the wonderful quality of a fable while taking place in recognizable surroundings. It is slightly reminiscent of a Maurice Sendak story.

Since this comes early in RABBIT TRAP, it’s probably not spoilery to say that the characters observe that we enter the world through our eyes, and the world enters us through our ears. If this strikes a chord, RABBIT TRAP will likely be appealing.

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