Dinah Reed’s “Run Rabbit Run” does a great job of capturing buried trauma and resurrected guilt. The wonderful Sarah Snook interacts with a creepy bunny in this hilarious Australian psychodrama.
Snook plays Sarah, a fertility doctor who has a little daughter, Mia (featuring Lily Latorre), and a loving ex-husband, Pete (Damon Herriman). From the beginning, Sarah has had trouble coping with her father’s recent death, and she appears to be in turmoil. When Pete reveals that he plans to have a child with her new wife, Sarah’s distress only increases. She has her reasons for not wanting Mia to have her brother.
As we wait for that to be revealed, we see Mia turning into a stranger and Sarah photogenicly falling apart. Requesting to visit her grandmother, whom she has never met, Mia begins experiencing tantrums, panic attacks, mysterious bruises and nosebleeds. Rather than consult her doctor, Sarah complied with her child’s wishes, with predictably disastrous results. In a movie like this, adult rational behavior is against the requirements. Instead, we have a squirming white rabbit. She appears on the porch of Sarah’s house and violently resists her banishment.
Dark and nebulous, “Run Rabbit Run” is a moody, unsteady tease, full of familiar spectral signifiers: dank dreams, terrifying paintings, and anxiety-mongering masks. Snook does anything but rip clothes in a performance that only underscores the busy emptiness of Hannah Kent’s script. But sometimes, when Bonnie Elliot is insecure, The camera sneaks into a damp hut filled with terrifying tools and crawls Whether you’re squeezing through a forbidden tunnel of twisting vines or cringing with scissors at a shocking event, you’ll find yourself in a more vibrant, more sensitive film. At least I wanted to know more about that fucking bunny.
run rabbit run
Unrated. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. Watch on Netflix.
