Rabbit Trap (2025)

[BluBonnet]

This will be making its premier at Sundance as part of the "Midnight" selections.

When a musician and her husband move to a remote house in Wales, the music they make disturbs local ancient folk magic, bringing a nameless child to their door who is intent on infiltrating their lives.

Set in 1976, writer and director Bryn Chainey’s extraordinary debut feature invokes the eerie spirit of British folk horror, conjuring supernatural dread in a fecund Welsh forest. Obsessive avant-garde musician Daphne (Rosy McEwen) toils over reel-to-reel tape machines and oscillators in their cottage while her withdrawn husband, Darcy (Dev Patel), collects field recordings in the nearby woods. Their activities draw the attention of a mysterious young rabbit trapper (an unnerving Jade Croot) who beguiles them, disturbing their fragile peace.

Rabbit Trap casts a spell of haunted sensuality and submerged trauma through cinematographer Andreas Johannessen’s tactile 35mm images, and a synesthetic soundscape made in collaboration between composer Lucrecia Dalt and sound designer Graham Reznick. Patel and McEwen are quietly moving as the young couple, grounding this otherworldly fable with a portrait of a marriage sustained through fraught intimacy and restless creative collaboration.
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[BluBonnet]

Anything that pays homage to Delia Derbyshire is an automatic must-see!

‘Rabbit Trap’ Director on His Folk Horror Sundance Film and Casting a ‘Ripped’ Post-‘Monkey Man’ Dev Patel

Among another impressive stack of new horror titles looking to spook audiences at this year’s Sundance, “Rabbit Trap” joins a growing library of psychological folk horrors that have recently offered more (deeply) unsettling creeps than out-and-out scares.

Bowing in the Midnight slot in Park City on Friday and the feature debut of Brit director Bryn Chainey, the film doesn’t just boast an Oscar nominee in Dev Patel among its somewhat limited cast (there are only three characters in the entire feature), but comes with the backing of Elijah Wood’s SpectreVision (“Mandy,” “Color Out of Space”).

Set in 1976 in rural Wales, “Rabbit Trap” centers on Daphne Davenport (“Blue Jean” breakout Rosy McEwen), an experimental electronic musician who, alongside her troubled husband and collaborator Darcy (Patel), has moved to a remote abandoned farmhouse in the countryside. It’s here where, equipped with a wild laboratory of analogue synthesizers, tape decks, theremins and very little else, they hope to finish Daphne’s new album while also finding space to heal after several failed attempts to have a baby.

As ever, things don’t quite pan out. In “Rabbit Trap,” it’s via ancient spirits, disturbed after Darcy inadvertently captures a forbidden mystical sound never before heard by human ears while out recording in the eerie woodlands. The sound — which renews Daphne’s creative energy — draws the attention of a strange nameless teenage boy (Jade Croot), who instantly attaches himself to the Davenports with an obsessive passion, attempting to drawing them into the natural world to which he’s connected but also apart as a couple.

For Chainey, “Rabbit Trap” came out of a long-standing love of Welsh folklore and all things fairies and goblins and analyzing the truth behind the stories. Speaking to Variety ahead of the Sundance premiere, he discusses managing to lure Patel (still ripped after recently shooting his bloody action thriller “Monkey Man”) into his creepy world, paying tribute to female electronic music pioneers such as Delia Derbyshire (who famously created the original “Doctor Who” theme) and why cigarettes prevented him from actually shooting in Wales.

[Zivouhr]

If it's a horror movie, it sounds interesting. They go onto the new land home, play music outdoors, and anger the local spirits or people living there who then seek revenge.

[Cremildo]

Rabbit Trap - Official Trailer | Starring Dev Patel and Rosy McEwen | In Theaters September 12 - YouTube