So, Succession is over and you are craving your Sarah Snook fix. If that is you, then look no further than Netflix’s taut mother-daughter chiller Run Rabbit Run, set in rural Australia.
Snook plays Sarah, a fertility doctor who lives with her child Mia (Lily LaTorre) after a split from the girl’s father (Damon Herriman). Lurking in the margins of Sarah’s life is her mother, whom she has deliberately cut out of her life; Joan (Greta Scacchi) has dementia and is living in a nursing home.
Things begin to take a strange turn when Mia insists on being called Alice, the name of Sarah’s sister, who disappeared when Sarah was young. Then the mood gets downright creepy when Mia starts wearing a pink-ish rabbit mask. As the distance between the girl and her mum grows, Mia’s behaviour becomes ever more unsettling. Is she possessed? Or is Sarah losing her grip on reality? There are often times when Rub Rabbit Run gets an ‘A’ for ambiguity.
The film is pregnant with atmosphere, with director Daina Reid (who previously helmed episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale) conjuring up an increasingly hallucinatory experience. Together, Snook and LaTorre make for an admirable force, frequently generating an electric chemistry. It’s also heartening to see Herriman play against type (see his Charles Manson in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) as the well-balanced father.
Sadly, a generic script doesn’t aid the film’s overall ambitions. A little less than the sum of its parts, Run Rabbit Run is ultimately more intriguing than outright terrifying.
Run Rabbit Run is on Netflix from June 28.
