From Jeremy Kibler

It’s not likely that a filmmaker makes a film just to have it compared to other films, but that sort of happens with director Daina Reid’s Run Rabbit Run. Acquired by Netflix right out of Sundance, this psychological horror drama is beautifully moody with a compelling lead performance by Sarah Snook, and yet, it underwhelms, frustratingly so. Not to sound glib, but this is “trauma horror” with an Australian accent.

Snook plays Dr. Sarah Gregory, a fertility doctor who has had experience with grief her whole life. She’s coping with the recent loss of her father and the estrangement from her mother who’s in a facility. She has an amicable relationship with her ex-husband (Damon Herriman), but Sarah has full custody of their daughter Mia (Lily Latorre), who has just turned 7. After wanting to keep a rabbit she finds in their yard, Mia starts acting strangely and showing resentment. She wears a bunny mask made out of pink paper. She starts having nosebleeds. She’s been drawing nightmarish pictures at school (and secretly at home). Pretty soon, Mia is asking Sarah about wanting to see Grandma Joan, whom she’s never met, and wanting to be called “Alice” because she insists that she is Alice. This all brings up complicated feelings and trauma from Sarah’s childhood. 

On the surface—a fraught Australian mother dealing with a child who’s acting out, as well as possibly supernatural goings-on—Run Rabbit Run inevitably compares itself to The Babadook (but also maybe a little of Goodnight Mommy). There will always be genre films about the horrors of motherhood and (Jamie Lee Curtis’ favorite Halloween interview buzzword) trauma. But this particular time, there’s just not enough here to fill what feels like a lot of inert “is it real?” wheel-spinning until an implicitly grim conclusion that will inspire more of a “is that it?” Some of the most effective, unshakable horror films are glacially paced but still intoxicatingly assured. This one, on the other hand, takes its sweet time unfolding (not like a white rabbit) and just keeps going and going without ever finding its footing or even a consistent patch of dread and tension. 

Besides the film being extremely muted on chills, the screenplay by Aussie novelist Hannah Kent is pretty thin. It withholds information for a long while, and then once the obvious answer to the greater mystery arrives, it’s only satisfying because the movie has finally caught up to us, the viewer. At least the fact that there’s a white rabbit and a character named Alice doesn’t get hammered home.

Even if they can only take the film so far, there’s still some good here, from a performance and technical perspective. Speaking in her Australian mother tongue, Sarah Snook does strong, emotionally harrowing work as a mother trying to contain her cool before entering a psychologically fractured state. She makes everything matter beyond standard horror-movie beats, and if anything, Snook can make an unsettling impact with a mere look. Lily Latorre also holds her own as Mia, who could give Noah Wiseman’s Samuel from The Babadook a run for his money for being a screaming form of birth control. Director Reid and cinematographer Bonnie Elliott also capture some haunting scenery of South Australia’s Riverland landscape and create some stunningly atmospheric shot compositions (there’s more beauty than murkiness even in nighttime scenes). 

Somewhere in Run Rabbit Run, there is a haunting story about long-kept family secrets and unresolved guilt. Too bad those pretenses make a slow-burn ghost story that’s too conventional and threadbare by half.

Run Rabbit Run will stream on Netflix starting June 28, 2023. 

Rating: 2/5

Follow Jeremy at @JKiblerFilm