Dancing with the mysticism of folklore and dream-like, earthly visuals, “Rabbit Trap” explores the cruelty and comfort of grief through its ambient sound, rabbit symbolism and entrancing narration.
The movie focuses on a couple’s new settlement into their isolated cabin, where they moved in order to find musical inspiration from the sounds of nature. However, once a nameless child shows up on their thought-to-be empty land, the couple experiences various spiritual distortions of reality that make them question what the child is really there for.
In order to ease the audience into this otherworldly atmosphere, the film opens with a monologue speaking about special music that is to be listened to without any predisposition and that the Earth is a body. As it is spoken, the screen displays the visual soundwaves that move with the volume and diction of the voice, which conveys the main theme in the movie being the usage of sound and aspects within certain folklore.
While a lot of the sound presented throughout the movie is from nature, such as birds and wind blowing through the grass, the ambient, metaphorical sound comes from the music played by the couple. The music is not simply “music” — rather, it is presented as its own entity.
The first instance of ambient sound happens when Darcy, the husband, records the audio of the inner workings of a fairy ring, which is a naturally-formed, ring-like organization of mushrooms. The sound is a combination of droning as well as a muffled, distorted voice.
Once Darcy and his wife, Daphne, play the music in their home, the viewers’ perspective becomes fractured, as if simulating a dream sequence. The next day, the unknown child appears at their home, watching from a distance. It is as if the child was summoned to the home by the music.
The sounds and music contribute greatly to the theme of the film, but my favorite aspect has to be the titular animal’s symbolism, the rabbit’s storytelling purpose.
Different camera shots of landscapes and burrow entrances play as the child narrates the spiritual roles that rabbits possess, explaining that rabbits are wanderers that move between worlds and messengers for the physical world and the underworld. Displayed across the course of the motion picture, Darcy is essentially a human manifestation of a rabbit.
Darcy experiences odd dreams that involve a nightmarish figure of his father, causing him to fall into a sleep paralysis-like state. It is also shown how Darcy suffers from isolation as well as feelings of uncertainty with his place in the world. In his journeys through his hallucinations in the physical world as well as his nightmares pertaining to his father, he moves between worlds, just as rabbits do.
His distress with his father and his emotions overall paint a picture of grief over trauma that seemingly happened before in his life. With this grief, he is unable to connect with the child as well as Daphne does. This leaves him vulnerable to the darkness within the vast woods that reside close to their home.
As he is in the woods, teetering between the real world and the spiritual realm, his foot is caught in a rabbit trap. While it is a little on the nose, it is a result of the foreshadowing that occurred earlier in the film, where the child showed him how rabbits were caught in the trap. This display of being trapped shows a sense of comfort one has in not making an effort to escape, with letting the darkness hold its grasp.
Despite his grief, he is able to pull himself out of the darkness, the underworld. It is one interpretation of the story that shows how a person can slip so easily between the cracks of reality, losing themselves to such powerful emotions. In spite of the overwhelming pull of the darkness, that same person can pull themselves out, which displays a resilience in one’s character.
As there are multiple layers to the theme of grief present in the movie, such as Daphne’s inner turmoil with wanting a child of her own and the child’s desire to have a loving family, Darcy’s unrest in his grief is the strongest of all. It even ends with him narrating into a microphone about only having the strength to say certain things over recording, which shows how he is overcoming his unresolved grief within his trauma.
This film resonated with me not only because of the rabbit theme, but also the incorporation of real folklore characteristics and the interpretations of dreams. It also can be interpreted in many different ways from the various inner conflicts between all three of the main characters.
Dev Patel’s portrayal of Darcy exceeds my expectations I had for him before watching. His performance with just the sadness in his eyes and the shaking of his hands are enough to tell a story of doubt within oneself. If you were to watch “The Green Knight,” which Patel also stars in, you would recognize a similar performance, but “Rabbit Trap” emphasizes the growth he has had as a soul-stirring actor.
