Run Rabbit Run review.
Run Rabbit Run has an intriguing premise and top notch acting. It’s also slower than molasses.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Run Rabbit Run
Directed by Daina Reid
Written by Hannah Kent
Starring Sarah Snook, Daon Herriman, Greta Scacchi and Lily LaTorre
Run Rabbit Run Review
If I’ve said it once I’ve said it at least that one time…a slow burn only works if it leads to an explosion. Run Rabbit Run has what I’d call a glacial flicker. The explosion never comes. That isn’t to say nothing happens…just…next to nothing happens. It’s a shame, really. The story has intriguing premises, fantastic lead performances and is a beautifully made film. At times it looks like a painting. Too often it moves like one.
Run Rabbit Run falls into the Creepy Child category of horror. Creepy Child with a dash of the past coming back to haunt you. Sarah (Sarah Snook) is a single mother who is dealing with her father’s death and her mother’s failing health. Her daughter Mia (Lily LaTorre) begins acting strangely after her 7th birthday. She claims to be named Alice…Sarah’s sister who went missing at the age of 7.
That’s a great premise. You can feel the creepiness just in its synopsis. You can feel it in the early parts of Run Rabbit Run too. The problem is that you become too numbed by the pace of the movie to feel it for long enough. Information is doled out so slowly that it doesn’t achieve maximum effectiveness. Mostly we just live with Sarah’s sadness and confusion for an hour and forty minutes.
Thankfully, Sarah Snook gives us something worth watching. She’s terrific as the tortured and increasingly desperate mother, daughter, and sister. Those relationships are important enough to the story of Run Rabbit Run to list them all. We catch glimpses of Sarah’s life outside of those contexts…but nothing substantial enough to matter. That’s on purpose, of course. This is a story about family and familial trauma. And it plays out just as fun as it sounds.
The concept presented with Mia has a lot of potential. Run Rabbit Run finds some of it. LaTorre is also great as an increasingly disturbing/disturbed child. The movie sprinkles in moments of creepiness but the pacing doesn’t allow it to sustain tension. It is effective in putting viewers into the lives of Sarah and Mia. It’s just less effective at making those lives compelling. That despite the actors doing their best to elevate what should have been already strong material. It needed more. That’s the best way to explain Run Rabbit Run. It needed more.
If the sadness in Sarah’s home wasn’t enough…we also spend time with her ailing mother. A woman who has wasted her life waiting for her lost child to return. To say the movie isn’t a barrel of laughs would be an understatement. There isn’t one moment that will lead to you cracking a smile. Not a moment of joy to be had. Add that to its sluggish pace and you can probably see the problem. It can be difficult to feel engaged in different levels of sadness when there is no sign of lost happiness to contrast it with. Put it up there with a slow burn needs an explosion. Sadness needs signs of happiness to contrast it with.
Run Rabbit Run is a well-made, well-acted movie that doesn’t move fast enough to get out of its own funk. I get it. It’s supposed to make us feel like Sarah does. Without showing up a time when things were better…that’s hard to connect with. Without an explosion…the build is wasted. What you get is a somber march towards an ending that you’ll be too tired to be moved by. If only it could have given us some excitement along the way.
Scare Value
Run Rabbit Run is just too slow to grab you despite some excellent work in front of the camera. It’s beautiful to look at and has moments of genuine interest…but the juice isn’t worth the tedious squeeze. What we get is a watchable movie that struggles to engage you beyond winning performances from Sarah Snook and Lily LaTorre.
2/5
Run Rabbit Run Link
Streaming on Netflix
Run Rabbit Run Trailer
If you enjoyed this review, check out other new releases: Follow Her, Murder, Anyone?, The Park and The Blackening and Godless: The Eastfield Exorcism
