Dull Atmosphere Clouds “Rabbit Trap”

Rabbit Trap (Bryn Chainey, 2025) 2½ out of 5 stars

Director Bryn Chainey, making his feature-film debut, leads us into a cryptic and often abstract journey with Rabbit Trap. Dev Patel (The Wedding Guest) and Rosy McEwen (Vesper) play Darcy and Daphne, a couple who has just purchased a nice cottage home to further their creative endeavors. As they settle into their new lifestyle, their universe inadvertently clashes with something otherworldly.

Like Chainey, we, the audience, acknowledge but aren’t asked to investigate a clear division between Darcy and Daphne. This building tension pairs nicely with the film’s supernatural element. We are used to magic coming with rules and expectations nowadays, but it’s always important to be reminded that a truly awe-inspiring depiction of magic must be unruly and motivated by the human emotions at the center of the story. Rabbit Trap understands this philosophy well enough in its first act, but the characters never evolve past their surface-level intrigue.

This dullification of its characters is what hurts the folksy atmosphere for which Rabbit Trap is aiming. When the film’s protagonists falls behind, its immaculate sound design picks up a little bit of the slack. Truly, the only times the movie comes alive is when we are immersed in the enchanting audio of the forest setting. Patel and McEwen are unsurprisingly both consummate professionals and provide the heart and tenderness to their roles that Chainey’s script fails to offer.

Rabbit Trap boasts some lightly effective atmospheric visuals. Still, a film like this one needs dramatic heft for those very visuals to carry any weight by the time the credits roll. Chainey is undoubtedly a filmmaker to keep an eye on, but Rabbit Trap needed a script that had a clear idea of the potential of its human drama at page one.

Patrick Howard

Patrick Howard has been a cinephile since age seven. Alongside 10 years of experience in film analysis and criticism, he is a staunch supporter of all art forms and believes their influence and legacy over human culture is vital. Mr. Howard takes the time to write his own narrative stories when he can.