Supernatural horror films that largely centre on mothers dealing with trauma and grief are quite common. Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook and Ari Aster’s Hereditary, which had various metaphors for mental illness and death, stand out for their takes on horror elements. Following those films, Daina Reid’s Run Rabbit Run, which premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, follows a desperate mother trying to figure out what is wrong with her young daughter. Reid’s movie begins with a promising first act that includes metaphors of the protagonist’s tragic history, but the story progresses with familiar themes and repetitive jumpscares that don’t bring anything new to the table.
Sarah (Sarah Snook, Succession), a fertility doctor, lives in a South Australian suburb with her daughter, Mia (Lily Latorre), who is celebrating her seventh birthday. It eerily coincides with the death of Sarah’s father and she is still dealing with the tragedy. As if her life wasn’t bad enough, Sarah finds out that her ex-husband, Pete (Damon Herriman) and his new partner, Denise (Naomi Rukavina) are planning to have a second child. When Mia comes back from school, she finds a white rabbit on their front porch and keeps the animal in the backyard. One day, Mia begins to exhibit strange behaviours. She wears a rabbit mask and starts to react violently towards Sarah. Mia asks about her grandmother, Joan (Greta Scacchi), a person who she has never met before, suffering from dementia. Sarah begins to dive back into her past and confront some demons in her closet to save her daughter’s life before everything goes downhill.
Reid and screenwriter Hannah Kent are familiar with what drives the genre: tension, the supernatural, and death, however, the delivery is underwhelming. Run Rabbit Run begins by introducing ominous animals, a white rabbit and then much later on a bird, which Sarah runs over in one scene. These metaphorical meanings are shown as visual motifs of Sarah and Mia’s journey. They create a looming sense of danger that is ahead for the mother and daughter but none of it is properly explained. The audience is meant to decipher each metaphor to understand Sarah and Mia’s breakdowns, from the dark sketches of stick figures with no eyes or limbs on the back of Mia’s school drawings to Sarah reliving the trauma of her childhood. In many scenes, Mia wears a dress and stands in the dark with her hair dishevelled. Then, she sneaks behind Sarah and covers her eyes and says, “Guess who?” This happens several times in the movie. As the story progresses, Reid peels back these layers; however, the repeated allegories and repetitive jumpscares leave Run Rabbit Run with a fairly different result.
Moreover, the movie is piled with horror tropes. Reid doesn’t attempt to introduce new ideas. The movie uses psychological threats to elevate the morbid and threatening objects, such as doors swinging open in the background, hallucinations, dreams that indicate a traumatic past, bruises, and sudden nosebleeds. Reid repeatedly uses the same horror effect to distort her protagonist’s surroundings causing her to see subjects that aren’t present in reality. In James Wan’s Malignant, when Gabriel possesses Madison’s body, he distorts her reality and she begins to hallucinate into thinking everything is normal. She slowly begins to experience the murders, unaware that her body is being used as a decoy. In Reid’s movie, when Sarah arrives at her abandoned childhood home, things begin to escalate. She begins to hallucinate and sees Mia in dangerous situations. This taps into the deeper parts of Sarah’s past, which slowly begins to unravel.
Regardless of the shaky story, Snook’s performance outmatches everything. She plays a complex role of a mother frustrated by her daughter’s behaviour. Despite the underwhelming material, Run Rabbit Run belongs to Snook, who does most of the heavy lifting. She offers a persuading performance of a woman who becomes increasingly unhinged. Even when Snook shows a sympathetic side to her character, some viewers may be disheartened by the constant red flags. Snook’s performance is not one to be forgotten, but because the movie runs with the same ideas and concepts, it brings down the overall tone.
Run Rabbit Run’s cinematographer, Bonnie Elliott, introduces gorgeous visual landscapes of Southern Australia. The cinematographer also uses drones to show the scenery, along with mysteriously dark shots of the white rabbit hiding in the shadows. One aspect of the film’s horror elements being elevated is due to the eerie soundscapes. Reid relies on silent whispers and howling winds to invoke danger that is yet to happen. Without the use of sound, the foreboding dream sequences and flashbacks aren’t intriguing. All of these sequences work well alongside Mark Bradshaw and Marcus Whale’s score, which preys on Sarah and Mia’s breakdowns.
After all the metaphors and horror tropes, Reid’s Run Rabbit Run is an undercooked supernatural film which had the potential to bring new ideas. However, it resulted in a missed opportunity to tell a story on the trauma and grief of motherhood. With its potential to focus on trauma-based horror, the movie catches glimpses of concepts that have already been introduced. The last hour of the movie ends with a doubtful resolution and suggests an unsatisfying, yet rather forgettable ending that leaves much to be desired. Run Rabbit Run attempts to reach its full potential and explore the horror depictions of motherhood, but the story isn’t salvageable enough to come close to its previous influences. There is something greater to be achieved with Reid’s movie, unfortunately, there isn’t enough substance for it to be meaningful.
