There’s this phenomenon that happens to creative people. They hit a block, the ideas don’t come. They think: “well maybe with the right setting…” They go to Joshua Tree or a cabin in the woods and wait for lightning to strike. I myself have huddled away in various hotel lobbies, hoping that a chaise lounge and a glass of bourbon would be all it took for me to find the words.
In ‘Rabbit Trap,’ we see a musician named Daphne Davenport (Rosy McEwen) and her husband Darcy (Dev Patel) venture out of the city and into remote Wales as she builds her next album around nature. As we can tell by her reserve and his nightmares, they seem to be taking with them some emotional distress. There’s something not being discussed. But when it comes to making music, this setting will do it. It has to.
Credit: Magnolia PicturesIf you’re expecting scares, you won’t find them here. What ensues is less folk horror and more of an abstract meditation on trauma. It’s not about rediscovering some creative spark, not really. Instead, it’s about what it means to mine for something deeper: reconnecting the body with the mind, with the earth and, yes, with the soul.
This dark destination for Bryn Chainey’s film works in concert with how idyllic this creative retreat feels at first. Darcy ventures out each day to capture field recordings of nature: wind, water dripping into a bucket, a flock of birds in flight. On a quiet morning, Darcy asks Daphne what’s wrong. She responds, “Don’t you ever want to dissolve? Just melt into the earth.” They seem to do exactly that in front of Chainey’s lens. The production is lush and green, swoonily captured by director of photography Andreas Johannessen. Costumed in earth tones, human bodies seem to fade into their environment. Wide shots swallow those bodies up into the frame, overflowing with trees and wild bushes. It’s so beautiful. But something’s wrong.
Credit: Magnolia PicturesIt doesn’t feel inconsequential that ‘Rabbit Trap’ is set in 1976: the year that Wales experienced the worst drought in its recorded history. While Daphne and Darcy wander the greenest of environs, in reality much of the region was devastated during this time. Water was rationed and riverbeds dried up, making way for children to ride bicycles through them. With this detail alone, the film hints at the imagined world we’re in, and the fantastical events to come.
This first comes in the form of a sound Darcy captures in the countryside. It doesn’t seem to matter to him that it’s 1) spooky and 2) heard in a circle of fungi in the woods. What’s important is that it’s unlike any they’ve heard or captured before. Finally: something to awaken Daphne’s senses.
Throughout the film, we watch Daphne work, and McEwen plays her frustration with a buried melancholy. She’s so desperate for inspiration that she even records Darcy one night while he has another one of his nightmares — this instead of addressing with her husband what could be the cause of them.
To be fair, the music she’s created thus far isn’t “good” let alone listenable — the line “Your eyes are ears. Your hands are ears. Your sex is ears.” features in her work in progress — but maybe that’s okay. This trip was never about needing to clear a creative block, but an emotional one.
It’s the folk horror elements that aren’t handled as elegantly as the human ones. They’re all rooted in the arrival of who the credit list refers to as “The Child,” a young hunter played by Jade Croot. He meets Darcy and immediately enmeshes himself in the Davenports’ lives. Darcy teaches him about field recording, The Child reciprocates with gifts like eggs, flowers and a dead rabbit he tracked down. The relationship goes pear-shaped when his attachment to the couple becomes intrusive, and includes an introduction to the supernatural. “There is a veil between this world and faerie,” he says, just before bringing the couple back to what we now know is a faerie circle in the woods.
Credit: Magnolia PicturesThe Child becomes the focal point of the rest of ‘Rabbit Trap,’ a symbol of seemingly many things for Darcy and Daphne. Could The Child be a manifestation of the couple’s yearning for a child that never came? A spirit meant to bring them closer to the earth and each other? A stand-in for innocence gone sour? We know there’s trauma in there somewhere. There are nightmares and memories unspoken between the Davenports that now seem to be out in the open. But the script seems to want everything all at once, with inexplicable imagery to match: a cottage overtaken by moss and slugs, a repeated motif of drippy, orange goo. None of it is quite enough to make the trip to the countryside one with a meaningful takeaway.
Of course by this time, we and the couple have forgotten about the creative block that brought us here. The experimental nature album wasn’t the point. There were more timeless lessons to be learned in the forest. Venture out in search of escape or inspiration, you’ll always end up running right back into yourself.
The filmmakers couldn’t have predicted this, but ‘Rabbit Trap’ was released not long after Wales declared a drought similar to the one in 1976. Somewhere in the countryside, freshwater levels are dipping and nature reserves are on wildfire watch. I wonder if somewhere, some broken musician and their spouse are seeking unknown solace amongst tall, green trees.
‘Rabbit Trap’ releases in theaters on September 12th.
