If you’ve read any folk tales, it’s easy to see where Dev Patel goes wrong in the Rabbit Trap trailer: Don’t step into a fairy circle! And while you’re at it, beware of inviting a mysterious young stranger into your home. Both mistakes appear to set Patel down a winding woodsy path that will imperil him and his wife (Rosy McEwen).
“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,” according to a synopsis from the Sundance Film Festival, where Rabbit Trap premiered earlier this year. “Obsessive avant-garde musician Daphne (McEwen) toils over reel-to-reel tape machines and oscillators in their cottage while her withdrawn husband, Darcy (Patel), collects field recordings in the nearby woods.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.”
Speaking with Deadline, Chainey said that Rabbit Trap was inspired by a childhood interest in Welsh folklore. Returning to stories of fairies, goblins, and pixies as an adult, “the throughline I saw was neediness,” he explained. He realized the reason those stories resonated with him as a kid “was because these creatures in some ways are expressions of that little inner child that doesn’t ever go away. It’s been there since the beginning of mankind, and it’ll be there forever. It’s this inner child, which is conscious and really desperate for love, and to be seen, and to be held, and to have a home, and to be appreciated. And if it doesn’t get what it wants, it has a tantrum, it will blow up, like a child, it’s not just important for them to have attention, it’s life or death for kids. And I think we never lose that.” Rabbit Trap will debut in theaters September 12.
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