A cin­e­ma is pay­ing trib­ute to sin­is­ter screen bun­nies this Easter

In the dark era before the inter­net, the East­er Bun­ny was more than just a cute char­ac­ter who brought chil­dren colour­ful eggs. Due to their con­fus­ing repro­duc­tive anato­my, in the Mid­dle Ages it was a com­mon­ly held belief that rab­bits were her­maph­ro­dites (they’re not) and they had the abil­i­ty to have a ​“vir­gin” birth (that’s not how it works). In spite of this veneer of puri­ty, rab­bits were also asso­ci­at­ed with fer­til­i­ty, hence the expres­sion ​“breed like rab­bits,” so they became a kind of two-tier sym­bol of vir­gin­i­ty and cop­u­la­tion, which of course, made them a nat­ur­al mas­cot for the cru­ci­fix­ion and res­ur­rec­tion of Jesus Christ.

Rab­bits seem to embody cer­tain con­tra­dic­tions. They exist between two worlds, wild and domes­ti­cat­ed, fer­tile and vir­ginal, adorable and hor­ri­fy­ing. In the world of cin­e­ma, the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the gen­tle, cau­tious and cute out­ward appear­ance often con­ceals dark secrets. With that in mind, pro­gram­mers at the Ciné­math­èque Québé­coise have put togeth­er an East­er week­end pro­gramme called Dis­qui­et­ing Rab­bits (Inquié­tants Lap­ins), cov­er­ing a wide range of films includes Don­nie Darko, Inland Empire, Gum­mo and Wal­lace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rab­bit.

In films like Mon­ty Python and The Holy Grail, the fragili­ty of the white rab­bit is played up for a com­e­dy twist. On the quest for the holy grail, the Knights of the Round Table run into a num­ber of adver­saries but none quite as for­mi­da­ble as the dead­ly Rab­bit of Caer­bannog, a tiny blood-thirsty rab­bit that leaves a pile of bod­ies in its wake. With a lit­tle less blood, Wal­lace & Gromit and the Curse of the Were-Rab­bit imag­ines a sce­nario in which a town is ter­rorised by a mon­strous over­grown rab­bit. Even the pop­u­lar children’s nov­el, Bun­nic­u­la, pokes fun at the idea of a mon­strous rab­bit, by fea­tur­ing the tit­u­lar rab­bit as a veg­etable suck­ing vam­pire bunny.

Yet, in the world of creepy bun­nies, the more haunt­ing exam­ples toy with much more sin­is­ter con­no­ta­tions. In Har­vey, James Stew­art plays Elwood, a mid­dle-aged eccen­tric whose best friends is an invis­i­ble 6’3” rab­bit he believes is a Celtic mis­chief spir­it called a hooka. For obvi­ous rea­sons, his fam­i­ly and friends wor­ry that he may be suf­fer­ing from men­tal ill­ness and try to get him some help. Elwood even has a por­trait paint­ed of him with Har­vey, and rather than a real­is­tic rab­bit, he looks like a man in an East­er Bun­ny suit. Har­vey is not just some giant rab­bit though, accord­ing to Elwood he can stop clocks and trav­el through space and time. The film is large­ly played for laughs, one of the few entries in the rab­bit demon com­e­dy sub-genre.

Har­vey nev­er speaks for him­self in the film, in fact, we are nev­er quite sure he exists. While Elwood sees him as a source of com­fort, in real­i­ty, if Har­vey is real and pos­sess­es the pow­ers that Elwood claims, we’re deal­ing with an alto­geth­er dif­fer­ent kind of movie.

Don­nie Darko, which has an ever-shift­ing rep­u­ta­tion as a great work of emo-pop hor­ror and out­right trash, fea­tures one of the most infa­mous exam­ples of hor­ri­fy­ing large rab­bits. In fact, when peo­ple think of creepy rab­bits – most peo­ple imag­ine the faux-rab­bit suit dressed up with a dis­con­cert­ing mask and very un-bun­ny like teeth. With­in the film, not unlike Har­vey, Frank the Rab­bit serves as an invis­i­ble guide to Don­nie, telling him ear­ly in the film that the world will be end­ing in 28 days, six hours, 42 min­utes, and 12 sec­onds. Through­out the film, Frank’s appear­ances inject a sense of cor­rup­tion into Donnie’s life and he seems to be an agent of chaos, dri­ving Don­nie down a dark road. While the film’s end­ing par­tial­ly vin­di­cates Frank, his pres­ence remains haunt­ing and uncom­fort­able: his mere pres­ence in Donnie’s life serves as a dis­rupt­ing agent that reveals a frac­tured and unsta­ble reality.

Frank the Rab­bit is quite obvi­ous­ly a man in a suit, which seems to be a repeat­ed trend with­in the sub-genre of dis­con­cert­ing rab­bits. It applies in vary­ing degrees to Har­vey, Gum­mo and Lynch’s Inland Empire. It’s a strange quirk that plays into child­hood visions of rab­bits being most pop­u­lar­ly seen as mas­cots for East­er. These inter­pre­ta­tions reach into night­mares of youth, where the line between suit and man is not eas­i­ly defined, as it taps into the monot­o­ne emo­tion­al range of most ani­mal cos­tumes. These are not rab­bits, but rather peo­ple dressed up as them.

In this sense, Jan Švankmayer’s Alice remains some­thing of an excep­tion. Unlike some of the pre­vi­ous entries, the rab­bit is not nec­es­sar­i­ly quite as evil or demon­ic, though it def­i­nite­ly gives off the creeps. Švankmay­er uses a taxi­der­mied saw-filled rab­bit with some bulging eyes, which is enough to haunt your dreams for a lit­tle while. Alice itself takes on the idea of child­hood inno­cence, sift­ing a pop­u­lar children’s book, as a domes­tic night­mare. The white rab­bit becomes our ini­ti­ate into won­der­land, which is more hell than par­adise. Švankmayer’s depic­tion of won­der­ful por­trays it as an author­i­tar­i­an and cru­el autoc­ra­cy, a twist­ed mir­ror vision of the real world.

While we may imag­ine rab­bits as harm­less balls of fluff, in the realm of cin­e­ma you don’t have to cut very deep to find a twist­ed per­cep­tion of them. The diver­si­ty and vari­a­tion in dark rab­bit inter­pre­ta­tions are tru­ly remark­able, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing how they seem to run across so many eras, styles and expe­ri­ences. While rab­bits still have a fair­ly sun­ny rep­u­ta­tion, it might be time to con­sid­er that they might have some­thing to hide. If you’re into a more sec­u­lar East­er expe­ri­ence, maybe this year gath­er the fam­i­ly around to watch Har­vey or Don­nie Darko. If as adults we are chas­ing that mag­i­cal feel­ing of cel­e­brat­ing hol­i­days as a child, what bet­ter way to ush­er in the spring than to revis­it the hor­ror of adults wear­ing creepy rab­bit suits.