A fertility doctor, Sarah has an only child she adores: Mia, who has just turned seven. Yes, Sarah loves her daughter more than anything, including when Mia starts throwing tantrums, insulting her…and insisting on being called Alice. We could only see this as a whim, had it not been for the fact that Sarah once had a sister named Alice. Alice who disappeared one day at the age of seven… Carried by an invested performance by Sarah Snook, star of the popular series Successionthe horror movie Run Rabbit Run (Run, bunny, run) has the chance to intrigue, but not to frighten. And even…
As The Babadook, Hereditary (Hereditary), Goodnight Mommy, Relicor The Hole in the Groundto name only the most recent, Run Rabbit Run belongs to a horrific subgenre that could be summed up as follows: a mother is increasingly distressed by the strange changes observed in the behavior of her offspring.
However, the question that arises each time is the following: is the child the problem, or is it not rather the mother who derails, the story espousing her point of view perhaps unreliable?
Horror-loving film buffs will have plenty of time in this regard to count commonplaces and borrowings, especially those made from Hereditary and to relic. Like this last film, a troubled dynamic emerges in Run Rabbit Run between the daughter, the mother and a grandmother whose memory is fading.
It should be noted here that Sarah (Sarah Snook) erased Joan, her mother (Greta Scacchi), from her existence. Mia (Lily LaTorre) has never even met her. This does not prevent the little girl from declaring, to Sarah’s amazement, that she misses Joan and wants to visit her. Could Mia really be the reincarnation of Alice? Is she possessed by Alice’s spirit?
Alas, the mystery surrounding Alice’s disappearance is so predictable, so conventional, that anyone who has ever seen even a detective series or movie will have solved it in the middle, if not before. The rabbit, the threatening but redundant slow forward tracking shots, Sarah’s nightmares and cryptic (but not so much) hallucinations, the question of possession or reincarnation, as you wish: all this is only meant to distract from the fact that he This is a second-hand plot.
Ah, and can we declare a moratorium on the use of gruesome children’s drawings as parental alarm bells? This shot is more than hackneyed.
Neat invoice
In the demanding role of Mia, who is “perhaps” inhabited by the spirit of her aunt, little Lily LaTorre is formidable. She almost eclipses her adult partner. I have to say that, roughly speakingSarah Snook is given a descent into psychological hell of the kind that gives a good “ show in a film, but which, again, forces an unfavorable comparison with all the titles mentioned above.
At least, this first feature film by Daina Reid, director of episodes of quality series such as The Handmaid’s Tale (The Scarlet Maid) And The Outsider (The outsider), is it a formal success. In the absence of a solid scenario (the first of the novelist Hannah Kent), the director manages to forge a sinister atmosphere at will. Each plan is composed with an obvious talent for evocation.
In tune, cinematographer Bonnie Elliott (the series The Shining Girls) bathes the image in chilling blues in the city, then sepia like the memory in the countryside, before merging the two for a verdigris rendering at the end. A late end, an expected but satisfying outcome, followed by a second, winded one. In short, the case is there, but the content is disappointing.