29/06/23
Netflix
Run Rabbit Run is an unsettling psychodrama, set in an Australia that’s a lot darker and less sun-kissed than we usually see on screen. Woman of the moment, Sarah Snook, stars as single mother Sarah, whose orderly life disintegrates when her young daughter, Mia (Lily LaTorre), begins to exhibit some disturbing behaviours.
On the surface, Sarah seems to have it all: a good job, a nice house, a sweet kid and a civilised relationship with her ex (Damon Herriman). But underneath, she’s struggling. Her dad has just died, and her garage is full of his things, forcing her to confront a childhood trauma she’d rather forget. On Mia’s seventh birthday, a white rabbit appears from nowhere and the little girl adopts him as her pet. And then she starts to talk about things from Sarah’s past, things that she can’t possibly know…
It’s a simple enough story, but director Daina Read manages to generate real tension, despite what is obviously a low-budget, proving that you don’t need expensive gimmicks to make a scary, unnerving film. Sarah’s unravelling is slowly and meticulously examined, so that I’m holding my breath for much of the running time, genuinely fearful, wondering what is going to happen next.
I do suspect that much of the movie is on the cutting room floor. Early press releases (back when Elisabeth Moss was attached, before ‘scheduling conflicts’ meant she had to pull out) make much of the fact that Sarah is a fertility doctor, forced to confront her beliefs about life and death, but there’s not a lot of that in the version before me. True, we see Sarah wearing scrubs, and there’s one scene where she scans a pregnant woman, locating her foetus’s heartbeat, but beyond that and a solitary reference to her as ‘Doctor’, her job isn’t mentioned at all. In fact, when the rabbit bites her, she doesn’t seem to know how to treat the cut, so it’s hard to believe she’s even got a first aid certificate, let alone a medical degree. In addition – and I’m being deliberately vague here so as to avoid a spoiler – there’s quite a big event at the end that isn’t flagged up at all, so that I have to rewind to check if it really happened.
Despite these niggles, Run Rabbit Run is an enjoyably thrilling watch, and Sarah Snook and Lily LaTorre both carry it really well. Mia’s rabbit mask and the oblique Alice in Wonderland imagery are horribly spooky, and I find myself still thinking about this film when I wake up the next day.
3.8 stars
Susan Singfield