‘Rabbit Trap’ Review: Dev Patel Is Stuck in a Folk Horror Fairytale in This Flawed Directorial Debut | Sundance 2025

Deep into Rabbit Trap, the directorial debut of Bryn Chainey, a character mentions that “with your eyes you enter the world. With your ears, the world enters you.” While sound has always been essential to horror, it has rarely felt as especially oppressive and overwhelming as it does throughout Rabbit Trap, with Chainey aiming to unsettle the audience more aurally than visually. It’s an ingenious idea, one of many that Rabbit Trap has that doesn’t entirely work as well as one would hope. But while many films could crumble under that, Rabbit Trap feels more like a promising introduction to Chainey, rather than a film defined by its flawed and untapped potential.