Run Rabbit Run is a waste of Sarah Snook's talent
Filmed before Succession's final season but now arriving as Sarah Snook's first post-Succession release, Run Rabbit Run was picked up by Netflix after its Sundance world premiere in January.
It's easy to see why the streaming service would be interested in the horror movie. It has calibre in front of the camera (Sarah Snook, taking a role originally intended for Elisabeth Moss) and behind (Daina Reid was Emmy-nominated for her work on The Handmaid's Tale), while the premise is immediately arresting.
Sarah (Snook) is a fertility doctor who has to begin questioning the cycle of life when her daughter Mia (Lily LaTorre) starts pretending she is Sarah's long-lost sister. As her daughter's behaviour becomes increasingly erratic, Sarah is forced to confront a devastating past.
Intriguing, right? Sadly, despite the talent involved, Run Rabbit Run ends up being a dull trudge through familiar horror tropes.
Slow-burn horror when done well can creep under your skin, keeping you engrossed despite a seeming lack of movement plot-wise. Run Rabbit Run is going for this lingering atmospheric dread, but not only is there nothing really happening, there's also not a unique twist to keep you hooked.
The plot is drip-fed to the audience, but the problem is that if you've seen a horror before, you've put the pieces together long before the movie thinks it's pulling the 'gotcha' card. There is ambiguity in the finale, although not a kind that'll keep you debating – if anything it'll just make annoyed as it doesn't feel like the movie knows what it's doing either.
Horror as a grief metaphor is nothing new and Run Rabbit Run doesn't come close to matching likes of The Babadook or Relic from recent years. It a slow build to a lot of nothing, ultimately, with the finale going for shock value over anything interesting to say.
The problem then for Run Rabbit Run is whether it'll work for any particular audience. Dedicated horror fans might stick through to the finale even as they spot all the well-worn clichés, while non-horror fans drawn by the prospect of Sarah Snook might clock out early due to the lack of anything eventful.
If there's one thing that'll keep viewers watching, it's the two central performances from Sarah Snook and Lily LaTorre. LaTorre is unsettling and deadpans lines like "I don't think I am myself" for maximum chills. She almost takes the movie from Snook who is reliably excellent, intense and committed as the movie gets darker.
Shooting on location in Australia gifts the movie with cinematic landscapes that look both beautiful and eerie, especially when it comes to the second half set largely at Sarah's remote childhood home. Even when there's not much going on, there's at least something interesting to look at.
But good performances and handsome locations can only do so much when the story is derivative. Run Rabbit Run could have been another memorable modern horror, but it ends up being something you'll forget almost instantly.
Run Rabbit Run is available to watch now on Netflix.
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