Rabbit Trap

Rabbit Trap, a supernatural drama about a young couple haunted by a creepy child, revels in the tropes and tics of a few decades’ worth of British folk horror.

An incredibly ambitious film that, at times, astounds and then somehow can’t completely stick the landing.

The British director marries Welsh mythology to more modern ideas about processing trauma, using sound to create a strange and unsettling psychological mood piece rather than an out-and-out horror. The result is engagingly enigmatic if slight in terms of plot and light on chills.

Rabbit Trap loses focus, but not before it has shown us a scary performance from Croot.

Rabbit Trap, the horror folk tale from Bryn Chainey, is that unfortunate kind of creation: a work that so clearly possesses the tools that might make a good, captivating film, but instead ends up lost in the workshop, too busy admiring its own handiwork.

Director Chaney clearly has a lot of skill and talent. But for all of Rabbit Trap’s technical accomplishments, it’s very hard to be frightened or moved by something that never stops feeling like an exercise in style.

Chainey is certainly skilled at distracting us, drowning his film in atmosphere and mood to offset the devolving half-baked hokum of his plot.