Run Rabbit Run, 2023.
Directed by Daina Reid.
Starring Sarah Snook, Lily Latorre, Damon Herriman, and Greta Scacchi.
SYNOPSIS:
A fertility doctor who believes firmly in life and death must challenge her own values and confront a ghost from her past after noticing the strange behavior of her young daughter.
A psychological horror film starring the great Sarah Snook sells itself quite effortlessly, so it’s a shame that Daina Reid’s Run Rabbit Run strands her in a by-the-numbers genre effort that mostly feels like a grab bag of other, better movies.
Fertility doctor Sarah’s (Snook) life begins to unravel on her daughter Mia’s (Lily LaTorre) seventh birthday, as Mia begins acting peculiarly and a rabbit appears outside their home out of nowhere. In the days that follow, Mia behaves increasingly strangely, insisting to see her grandmother she’s never met and demanding to be called Alice – a name with a devastating significance to Sarah. In order to get to the bottom of her daughter’s acts, Sarah will need to plumb her own devastating well of childhood trauma.
Reid’s film is, at times, somewhat reminiscent of another, albeit massively superior, Australian horror film – 2020’s Relic, which similarly centered on trauma and mental illness across three generations of a family. Yet Run Rabbit Run is ultimately sober and sedate to a fault, far from the blackly comedic playfulness implied by its title; a brutal slow burn that initially intrigues yet ultimately unspools into a relatively unsatisfying outcome.
The early going certainly touts promise, as Reid focuses on the increasing abundance of oddities in Sarah’s orbit, and we’re left to consider whether their origin is psychological or supernatural. Yet by the pic’s mid-way point it starts chasing its own tail, having seemingly exhausted its best ideas and leading the audience on a sluggish amble to the eventual, not-terribly-interesting answers.
At even just 100 minutes, this is a flabby piece of work that leads to a drawn-out climax and elliptical ending sure to annoy its fair share of viewers. The near-saving grace, though, is Snook, who gives about as great a performance as anyone possibly could with material this uneven, persuading as a woman whose sanity becomes increasingly fringed for one reason or another. Snook’s chemistry with screen daughter Lily LaTorre sings, while LaTorre herself impressively gives a performance worthy of horror’s cute-but-creepy-kid pantheon.
DP Bonnie Elliott meanwhile turns in solidly atmospheric visuals – especially the regularly ominous glimpses of rabbits, which you might never view the same way after this – accentuated by a moody, droning violin score from Mark Bradshaw and Marcus Whale.
But it’s difficult not to see Run Rabbit Run as a disappointing missed opportunity; Snook was clearly game for a full-fat parenting-as-horror film in the vein of The Babadook, yet the script’s over-reliance on mouldy, played-out concepts ensures it’s arguably worse than being merely bad – it’s resoundingly forgettable.
Sarah Snook’s commanding performance keeps this boilerplate horror film watchable, even if it largely cribs from prior, superior genre offerings.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Shaun Munro – Follow me on Twitter for more film rambling.
