Run, the next entry in Aneesh Chaganty’s series of thrillers with verb titles (after 2018’s Searching), is based around a killer concept: how do you escape a controlling influence in your life when everything, from the world around you, up to and including your own body, is against you.
This is the dilemma faced by Chloe Sherman (Kiera Allen), a young, homeschooled woman who starts to realise that all is not well in her household while eagerly awaiting her college acceptance letter. It’s only now that she starts to notice how the odd the behaviour of her Mom (Sarah Paulson) often is. Odd enough that Chloe begins to question many of the assumptions of her everyday life.
Totally Normal Mom, Nothing to See Here
Why won’t her Mom let her get a mobile phone? Why does the Internet suddenly go out when she tries to research the new medication she’s been given? Why hasn’t she heard back about those college applications yet?
It’s a process made all the more difficult by the fact that she lives in an isolated, somewhat self-sufficient farmhouse. She’s homeschooled, has no mobile phone, no social media, and apparently no friends to speak of. No one passes by, ever. She’s only alone when her mother goes out, for very short periods of time, has limited access to the Internet and has to deal with an array of physical maladies spelled out by the opening credits. Arrhythmia, Hemochromatosis, Asthma, Diabetes, and Paralysis.
How do you even begin to think about getting out when the obstacles in your way are so many and so insurmountable?
Maybe I was spoiled by the trailers (occupational hazard, I guess), or by the fact that Chloe’s mother is played as odd from the off by Sarah Paulson, but I just couldn’t get into Run.
At times Run feels like two separate films, with Paulson and Allen acting in each, mostly separate from the other. Chloe sneaks around trying to research aspects of her life while Paulson gardens menacingly.
Misery… For Kids?
A third, more interesting film appears at one point when Chloe, portrayed by actual wheelchair user Allen, tries to escape the house after all the accessibility aids she’s come to rely upon, like the chairlift to get downstairs, have been denied her.
Unfortunately this also results in an overly convoluted scene involving the use of a soldering iron and a mouthful of water to smash a window. While this shows off Chloe’s smarts, it provides the exact same results as if she’d just smashed the glass with a blunt object from her room (or wrapped her hand up in the blanket which she brought with her anyway?).
I’m not even going to get into the scene where Chloe calls a completely random number to try and get someone to Google search something for her.
While at times the horror of what’s been done to Chloe – or is about to be – is genuinely chilling, the horror is undercut by the overwrought “horror music theme” that accompanies far too many scenes. This culminates in some of the most dramatic music cues for… a flight of stairs! An out of order sign! Mom! It ends up making some of the problems in Chloe’s way come off as comical rather than scary, as she faces… a ridiculously long queue at the pharmacy.
REQUIRED!
As the film progresses, the questions start to pile up and never get answered. Which of Chloe’s ailments are real? What are the scars on her mother’s back? How do they make money? This feels unsatisfying in a film that starts with “REQUIRED!” on a blackboard at the “Home School Association Monthly Meeting” as if to stifle any questions the audience might have later as to why Paulson would bother attending any such meeting.
Even the final reveal is unsatisfying as everything pertinent to the plot is kept handily in a single box.
I really enjoyed Searching, which was far more that a one trick gimmick movie and was looking forward to Run, but it feels like a mix of good ideas that just don’t come together satisfyingly.
Follow Us