RABBIT TRAP - Mark Reviews Movies

Rabbit Trap, Magnet Releasing

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 11, 2025

Writer/director Bryn Chainey makes Rabbit Trap quite mysterious. It's too much so, really, and if the final course of this strange story is to be taken for what it appears to represent, the screenplay also doesn't focus on the character who seems to be driving the bigger metaphor here.

Then again, who can say for certain, apart from Chainey himself, what this odd tale is actually about? On its face, it's about a married pair of musicians, the literally magical landscape of Wales, and a kid of unknown origin and nature who shows up and hangs around for some reason.

That description, of course, is mostly being flippant out of annoyance, because there is some intriguing material here. Little of it, though, has to do with Darcy (Dev Patel) and Daphne (Rosy McEwen), who have moved into a farmhouse in the Welsh countryside. It's 1976, and they plan to make more of their experimental music, with Darcy wandering the land with a microphone and a reel-to-reel recorder, while Daphne occasionally adds some hauntingly incoherent vocals to some electronic music. She at least knows that this isn't anything that's going to sell particularly well, since she says as much to the couple's unexpected and constant visitor.

That would be a character known only as the Child, played by Jade Croot. The adults don't know, don't bother asking, or just forget the kid's name. While both Darcy and Daphne assume the Child is a boy, Croot herself is an actress in her 20s, so the casting suggests Chainey is intentionally trying to play plenty of tricks with us when it comes to this character.

What sticks out, though, is that the Child is desperately, pathetically lonely. Darcy runs into the kid—quite literally—when he goes outside to record some ambient sound, spots what he believes to be a potential thief or weirdo after Daphne noted someone staring at the house, and tackles the Child.

The two end up spending a pleasant day together, with the kid showing Darcy some favorite spots, including a ring of mushrooms the Child refers to as a faerie circle. The kid warns Darcy not to step inside it, because the Child had a younger sibling who did once and aged quickly before dying. Darcy has already stepped inside the circle, tough, and passed out himself on a previous jaunt, but if one might think that's setting up some significant plot detail for later, it's best to forget the whole—just as Chainey apparently did.

The Child shows up at the house later and hits it off quite well with Daphne, who takes the kid under her wing, listens as the Child sings an old lullaby the kid's dead mother used to sing, and says the Child can come by anytime. The kid takes that literally and becomes quite upset when Darcy, who becomes irritated with the kid's presence for no particular reason, points out it's just a figure of speech.

There are two intriguing components of this story, which eventually spends a lot of time watching as Daphne, with the Child, and Darcy, on his own, wander the fields, forests, and caves of the nearby wilderness. More strange things occur, and one of them, which has Daphne unwittingly communicating with her husband by way of a puddle he finds, actually has something tangible to do with sound.

The most notably compelling element is the character of the Child, who is clearly meant to be a combination of vulnerable and creepy but, as played by Croot, is so much the former that the latter never quite arrives here. The kid is so melancholy and world-weary and obvious tragic, regardless of whatever the kid's true nature may be, that our main characters seem quite cruel for rejecting and forcing the Child out of their home in the rain.

The other component is the hint of what Chainey appears to be going for with this story. Darcy doesn't want to have children, because he believes there's a "rot" inside him—likely to do with a recurring nightmare of his father, which causes him sleep paralysis and invokes the suggestion of abuse. Based on her relationship with the Child, Daphne apparently does want to be a parent, but instead of simply allowing these characters to have anything approaching a conversation on the subject, Chainey offers a third act that's a dreamy bit of wish and, perhaps, fear fulfillment.

It might have emotionally registered, but Rabbit Trap is so intent on being moody and enigmatic in its approach that it neglects any sense of its characters. Without much practical grounding in the storytelling, the whole thing becomes too mysterious for its own good.

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