In the Welsh folk-horror “Rabbit Trap,” debuting director Bryn Chainey creates an disquieting acoustic atmosphere and guides his trio of actors to powerful performances. However, these flourishes serve a muddled piece that coasts on its interpretability alone.

There’s no microphone in the world strong enough to pick up a person’s deepest secrets, and yet every time Darcy (a compellingly anxious Dev Patel) takes his sound equipment for a wander around the primordial Welsh countryside,

Bryn Chainey’s first feature centers on an avant-garde musician and her sound recordist husband living in a remote cottage, where a strange local child forms an unhealthy attachment to them.

Instead, the film starring Dev Patel and Rosy McEwen takes a shockingly steep dive into narrative tedium and ho-hum genre beats. What initially begins as a formally adventurous tale of a husband and wife trying to make sense of a sound they recorded in 1976 deep in the Welsh woods becomes a woefully meandering and mundane horror misfire that wastes its potential.

In writer-director Bryn Chaney's feature debut 'Rabbit Trap', he uses Celtic folklore and the intimacy of sound to unpack an inner darkness.

Debut feature filmmaker Bryn Chainey discusses fairies, goblins and Welsh folklore and casting a 'ripped' post-'Monkey Man' Dev Patel

Dev Patel and Rose McEwen are great, but the sound design is the real star of Bryn Chainey's Sundance premiere 'Rabbit Trap'