There are moments in between Run Rabbit Run Australian family horror starring Sarah Snook, where you wonder if something is missing from the film. Absent in terms of narrative, which is structurally competent in a derivative sense, but in terms of having a genuine emotional investment in what is unfolding. While not without some arresting moments, the overall experience starts to wear rather thin as it spins its wheels to go through the motions that its previous works have done better. The emptiness at its core soon becomes a weight from which it can never overcome, as it drags itself from sequence to sequence about death that no longer has a greater life for them. Although Snook gives an often disturbing performance as a mother who uncovers her own past trauma as she confronts it, the rest of the film’s surroundings soon reveal themselves as a hollow imitation that has little substance. It may have found an audience on Netflix, who acquired it from the Sundance Film Festival, but it’s still not making much of an impression.
managed by Diana Reed From a screenplay by Hannah Kent, the film makes us initially happy though Snooker’s Sarah’s increasingly dull life. A mother who works as a fertility doctor, a profession that the film does no favors because it only invites comparison with the superior. Birth/rebirth It was also seen at the festival that he is going to celebrate his daughter’s birthday soon. Mia (Lily Latour) has just turned seven and looks like a perfectly normal little kid as he revels in the occasion. This will soon change when a rabbit shows up on their doorstep and the young girl soon begins wearing a mask resembling her new furry friend.
Sarah, carrying a lot of her own repressed grief, is clearly a bit uncomfortable with this though not quite sure what to do about it. However, when Mia starts calling herself a different name from her mother’s past and starts acting quite differently from the child we were first introduced to, what’s happening becomes impossible to ignore. As Sarah faces secrets that she did everything she could to bury them so she would never have to think about them again, the life she built for herself and her daughter begins to crumble before her eyes.
This all sounds well and good in theory. In execution, the film never finds its footing. Animal images, both rabbits and birds that seem to haunt the film at times, invite the feeling that something supernatural is going on. Unfortunately, it’s so vaguely sketched and lacks real horror that it soon becomes part of the lackluster overall experience. The suburbs where Sarah lives with a character known as Mia begin to feel suffocating. When a single mother sees her daughter making disturbing drawings that look like they could have been lifted from another movie, she begins to panic that elements of her past have been discovered. This setting is eventually abandoned when the two return to Sarah’s childhood home in an attempt to dial up the tension by tying the two timelines together. The whole experience is wonderfully reminiscent of Australian horror films of yesteryear Babadook and more recent remains How it tries to connect petrifying elements with something more personal.
where Run Rabbit Run is small in that it lacks any uniqueness of its own that it can call its own. There are some visual moments that stand out in the mind as the film robs you of any depth of experience as it increasingly toys with you as it repeatedly questions whether what we think matters at all. If there is one saving grace, it will be in Snook’s performance. Although best known to many for his role in the series legacy, he also proves that he can carry a film on his own. He shouldn’t, because the story lets him down at almost every turn, but he really rises to the occasion.
The manner in which she carries herself in the beginning as she goes through the routines of work and motherhood is matched by the way the darkness begins. As the rest of the film goes for minimal imitation, Snook feels like he’s bringing out something much deeper and more primal. He is able to take the flimsy premise the film is operating on and reach for something more interesting. In particular, several moments towards the end where Sarah is almost completely consumed by fear and the darkness around her cuts through all the noise. It’s his annoyed expression that sticks in your mind.
Image via SundanceCycling through various tropes where we begin to more or less believe Sarah’s point of view, a psychological metaphor about trauma cannibalizes the realization that it’s a closed loop. It only consumes itself and the characters in this pursuit, leaving little substance beyond its shallow ideas that never coalesce into anything meaningful. Although Snook does its best to elevate the experience, Run Rabbit Run It’s a horror film in search of something greater that others have already achieved that it will never find.
Run Rabbit Run Available on Netflix from June 28.
