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Can Sarah Snook Save Netflix's New Psychological Horror 'Run Rabbit Run'? Here's What The Reviews Say
As you might be able to tell from the below quotes from critics, "Succession" is over and the cast is free to do whatever they please. Sarah Snook, the famous redhead from Australia, is starring in Netflix's "Run Rabbit Run" which comes after some other famous turns by Australian actresses in horror films. There's Toni Collette in "Hereditary," Essie Davis in "The Babadook" and Robyn Nevin in "Relic."
This film doesn't seem to be as good as those examples, based on critical reception out of Sundance.
If you want to take the plunge anyways to support Sarah Snook, then the film releases on Netflix on June 28, 2023, and also stars Lily LaTorre, Damon Herriman and Greta Scacchi.
The premise
On the day of her daughter Mia's (Lily LaTorre) seventh birthday, Sarah (Snook) comes home to find a rabbit on their front porch. This triggers strange behavior in Mia, who begins acting out in more and more alarming ways. From saying that she misses her grandmother, a person she has never met before, to claiming to be someone named Alice, Mia becomes increasingly not herself. Sarah must then delve back into her past to confront some long-withheld demons in order to save her daughter before it's too late.
Directed by Daina Reid from a screenplay by Hannah Kent, the film places us in the initially happy though increasingly tenuous life of Snook's Sarah. A mother who works as a fertility doctor, a profession which does the film no favors as it just invites comparisons to the far superior "birth/rebirth" that also showed at the festival, she is soon to celebrate the birthday of her daughter. Mia (Lily Latorre) has just turned seven and appears to be a completely ordinary little kid as she revels in the occasion. That will soon change when a rabbit shows up on their doorstep and the young girl soon starts wearing a mask resembling her new furry friend.
It's visually really murky
The cinematography is murky, permanently casting an orange haze over the house night and day. This is out in the country, so of course, there is an abandoned shed filled with rusty rabbit traps and a large, creepy armoire that Sarah just has to go into late at night, alone, where unnatural sights and sounds surround her. When Sarah sits alone at a table, Mia appears in the corner of the frame, only to disappear when Sarah turns around. Other specters appear in dark corners and hidden places, just out of focus.
It also doesn't help that the visual storytelling falls flat. The film's lighting is flat and dull, leaning far too dark in scenes that don't necessarily need it. None of the sets are particularly interesting, but props do have to go to cinematographer Bonnie Elliott, who frames some pretty neat shots. A somewhat chilling one takes place in a garage, especially since it isn't accompanied by the genre's typical audiovisual cues.
This takes liberally from other, better films
These are certainly intriguing threads, but they can't help but feel recycled. Mia's uncanny, sinister quirks are pulled straight from "The Babadook"; Sarah's strained relationship with her ailing mother hews a little too close to "Relic," with which this film shares two producers. Snook, of course, is typically excellent, fresh from her turn as "Succession's" petulant, scheming Shiv Roy in another spiky role here — but even her performance, as it heightens towards a crazed delirium, recalls Toni Collette's in "Hereditary."
Fans of the "I Love You, My Child, But You're Really Creeping Mommy Out Right Now" subgenre have a treat in store with Daina Reid's "Run Rabbit Run," which hails, like a couple of other notable, similarly-themed horrors, from Australia. Indeed, the top-hatted shadow of Jennifer Kent's "The Babadook" and the matrilineal mayhem of Natalia Erika James' "Relic" — two other debuts by Aussie women that premiered in Sundance's Midnight section — loom large here, as do other breakouts like "Hereditary," "Goodnight Mommy" and even "The Orphanage." Too large, possibly, for Reid's film to fully escape a sense of diminished returns on its motherhood-is-madness, is-she-protecting-or-is-she-projecting and grief-is-a-ghost ideas.
The two leads are great, but that's it
Snook and Latorre operate on a similar plane here, as Sarah starts to really flip, and we wonder if what she's seeing is real or imagined or some supernatural machination. Plenty of jump scares featuring a glowering girl with long black hair in a tatty nightgown, just out of focus in the background, or flashes of blood-slathered hands or nightmares that culminate in over-the-top crashing sound design deliver "gotcha" moments. But they're just that, with little substance.
TL;DR
Netflix's "Run Rabbit Run" is a waste of Sarah Snook's talent.
The Australian psychological thriller "Run Rabbit Run" is all about trauma, but it doesn't offer any rewarding new approach to familiar themes.
Despite its excellent performances, TV director Daina Reid's first feature film in 13 years falls short of the standards we've come to expect from the Sundance Film Festival's horror strand.
Sarah Snook [stars] in a maternal horror flick whose shivers are only skin-deep.
