Existential musings about the nature of sound, past trauma and childlessness occupy the lovely headspace of “Rabbit Trap,” a quiet and obscurant folk horror tale set in 1970s Wales.

Dev Patel and Rosy McEwen (“The Alienist”) co-star as a couple who’ve retreated to a remote, bog, forest and stone corner of the Welsh countryside. They’ve filled their house with sound gear, from reel to reel recorders to oscillators, oscilloscopes and even a theremin.

Daphne is a musical fringe figure, an electronic music experimenter who has stopped touring to find new soundscapes to decorate her next album. Darcy is a sound designer, wandering the woods with a portable reel-to-reel deck, directional shotgun microphone and bulky Koss headphones to record everything from wind and birds to sheep.

He’s having nightmares, which she sometimes records. She’s having a touch of writer’s block.

And then Darcy chases down this odd local who seems to be spying on them. He apologizes repeatedly to a boy (played by actress Jade Croot) who asks a lot of pointed questions and never answers theirs. Like, what’s your name?

The kid is deep into Welsh folklore, talking about “the widows of the woods” (ancient moss-covered tree stumps), enchanted springs and holloww, assorted spirits and sprites and the “veil between this world and faeirie.”

The boy wants to know “what happens when a sound dies?” And nightmares or not, Darcy has an answer.

“When you hear a sound, you become its home.”

The kid, a self-described “hunter,” can be quippably cryptic, too.

“If you catch a rabbit, you catch the message it’s carrying.”

There are references to faeries as “a forgotten child,” as the kid’s attentions turn troubling and even scary.

Is this a demon in gender dysphoric form, a woodland sprite guarding the land or the child they might have had or might have? Are these interlopers in the Welsh hinterlands unwelcome or in danger?

Let’s just leave those many questions hanging there, because that’s what writer-director Bryn Chainey does with his debut feature. “Obscurant” as a descriptor is rarely a compliment.

But the stars and a startling number of producers (Elijah Wood among them) signed on to “Rabbit Trap,” with its daddy issues Slenderman nightmare images and vaguely menacing mystery “kid.” They saw something in the material on the scripted page.

The tone and atmosphere are immersive and decidedly analog, and the whole nature of “sound” thing makes an interesting metaphysical text or subtext.

But “Rabbit Trap” is like that rabbit the stranger caught for the couple. Darcy, like most of us, doesn’t know how to skin it. Neither, apparently, did Chainey.

Rating: unrated, violence

Cast: Dev Patel, Rosy McEwen and Jade Croot.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Bryn Chainey. A Magnet/Magnolia release.

Running time: 1:28