The right viewer in the proper frame of mind, in the mood for a gloomy, symbolic and supernatural dip into the psyche, might get more out of the Aussie thriller “Run Rabbit Run” than I did.
A slower-than-slow slide into a mother’s concern for a psychosis seemingly taking over her child, or perhaps herself, Daina Reid’s film almost made good on its threat to put me to sleep.
Sarah Snook, of “The Glass Castle,” “Pieces of a Woman” and “An American Pickle,” stars as Sarah, a fertility specialist and single mother in suburban Adelaide, South Australia.
She’s just lost her father, we gather in a compact little bit of opening exposition. She’s newly divorced. And we learn all this via her daughter Mia (Lily LaTorre), who asks a lot of questions about her upcoming seventh birthday party, which give the viewer a lot of answers about their lives.
They’re in a new place, with boxes filling the garage. And Mia is saying “I miss” this or that person — including Sarah’s estranged mother, Joan.
“I miss people I’ve never met all the time,” the kid assures her.
Then a white rabbit turns up at their door one day, and quite aside from the symbolism of a fertility doc taking care of a bunny, there’s the fact that her nickname for her child is “Bunny.”
Sarah tries to get the bunny to “f— off” once Mia’s gone to bed. The rabbit fights back, and Mia sees this from her window. That’s when Mia starts acting out, demanding to see “Joan,” looking for pictures of her mother’s childhood. There’s another girl in some of those old family photos. Mia declares “That’s me,” and when they visit Joan (Greta Scacchi) in the nursing home that’s stuck dealing with her dementia, Mia insists that she’s Alice, Sarah’s long lost sister.
Sarah skips from puzzled to infuriated to frantic over this turn of events, as Mia becomes more and more difficult to handle and starts sketching your standard issue “child seeing monsters” drawings at home and at school.
Can this child and mother be saved?
After that elegantly compact scene-setting opening, Reid — best known for TV’s “Shining Girls” — has a devil of a time getting this picture started and getting over a serious case of streaming-TV beating-around-the-bushism.
Yes, we can guess where this is heading, and quickly. Confusing us with whom exactly Mia is apparently reincarnating (Could be Joan, for a few scenes, “Alice” it is…eventually) doesn’t improve the narrative or throw us off the scent.
Snook does a nice job of unraveling, and LaTorre makes a perfectly infuriating, undisciplined child.
But “Run Rabbit Run” never moves at anything faster than a saunter, and takes forever to stop meandering about and get on the obvious horror parable it is trying to put over.
Rating: unrated, violence, profanity
Cast: Sarah Snook, Lily LaTorre, Greta Scacchi and Damon Herriman.
Credits: Directed by Daina Reid, scripted by Hannah Kent. An XYZ films release on Netflix.
Running time: 1:40
