Moody And Atmospheric Psychological Horror On Netflix Will Take You Down A Disturbing Rabbit Hole
I often find myself going on sporadic genre kicks because I’m constantly searching for the best version of whatever kind of story I’m looking for. I think I can finally step away from the “haunted house (or person)” psychological thriller grind, as I found the most satisfying premise in Netflix’s Run Rabbit Run. After consulting Rotten Tomatoes to see what people were saying about this Dana Reid-directed film, I didn’t have high expectations at all, as critics gave it an abysmal 37 percent score against an even lower audience score of 26 percent.
However, this is why I seek out supposedly bad movies like Run Rabbit Run in the first place; sometimes, everybody is wrong. Or maybe my brain is just so scrambled at this point that I don’t even know what’s good anymore. That is all to say that this movie legitimately spooked me in ways that The Black String, Malevolent, Don’t Listen, and No One Gets Out Alive didn’t.
Run Rabbit Run Starts Out Ominously
At its heart, Run Rabbit Run is about a mother with a questionable and mysterious past named Sarah (Sarah Snook) and her 7-year-old daughter, Mia (Lily LaTorre). Mia is having problems at school and becomes increasingly withdrawn after her seventh birthday party. Around the same time, Mia becomes obsessed with a stray rabbit that she convinces to Sarah to take care of.
Another Horror That Questions Reality
Run Rabbit Run shows its namesake when Mia decides to wear a pink rabbit mask made out of construction paper and refuses to take it off when Sarah asks. Mia, who never met Sarah’s mother, Joan (Greta Scacchi), insists that she misses her grandmother and urges Sarah to take her to the assisted living home where she’s being treated for Alzheimer’s disease. When they meet, Joan keeps referring to Mia as Alice, Sarah’s sister who died mysteriously when she was a child, long before Mia was born.
As Run Rabbit Run progresses into its second and third acts, Mia has moments of clarity, but more often than not, decides that she’s actually Alice and acts aggressively toward her mother.
A Disintegrating Relationship
Sarah, who has been very secretive about her past up to this point, becomes increasingly inconsolable and manic when Mia’s drawings suggest that she has actually been interacting with and acting out as Alice while in a fugue state. As Sarah slowly unravels, she begins to lose track of long stretches of time, and when she comes to her senses, she’s abusive toward Mia.
Children Are Creepy
I’m trying to wrap my head around why Run Rabbit Run got under my skin so much, as I’ve seen stories like this play out dozens, if not hundreds, of times before. The conclusion I arrived at is that Lily Latorre, who portrays Mia, is such a great child actor that she stole the show. Her ability to shift from a sweet little girl to a menacing antagonist figure at the drop of a hat, compounded by the jump cuts that suggest she’s able to be in more than one place at a time, was enough to make me lose sleep.
If you’re a parent of young kids, you’ll totally understand how terrifying it is when your 5-year-old wakes up in the middle of the night, and all you see is their silhouette standing in your bedroom doorway because they want an apple.
Leaves You With Questions
Run Rabbit Run is full of genre tropes, but it’s executed so flawlessly that I’ll say with confidence that it earned its right to use every single one of them. Given the questionable mental state every single character has in this movie, it’s hard to tell if Mia is just a kid with an overactive imagination, if Sarah is losing her mind, whether Joan has dementia, or if there is some unknown supernatural force at play that is affecting everybody in different ways.
Streaming Only On Netflix
REVIEW SCORE
All I can say with certainty is that Run Rabbit Run deserves a look if you’ve already written the title off based on its Rotten Tomatoes scores alone. I’ve seen terrible movies with high scores and amazing movies that have been similarly mistreated. You can arrive at your own conclusion by streaming Run Rabbit Run on Netflix the next time you want to stop trusting your old photo albums.
