Aside from what filmmaker Ari Aster is doing these days, emotional horror is not really a thing, or a recognized genre yet, but let’s justify its existence. Especially given we lived through the existentially withering horror of 2020, and an age when half our society demands more empathy, and the other half is brutally resentful that you’d dare ask such a thing. Take Aneesh Chaganty’s new horror-thriller “Run,” a Hulu movie about a hyper-controlling mother taken to new sociopathic heights. More specifically, a psycho control freak mom who does unspeakably horrible things to her daughter, “Run” is built on some of the most frightening betrayals one can imagine between parent and child trust, even more so when you consider mom as caretaker and daughter as a physically disabled wheelchair user dependent on her. The premise is so terrifying to consider; it actually gives you the chills without even knowing the details. It is stuffed to the brim with the stuff real rich emotional horror is built on.
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So, especially after seeing Chaganty’s terrific, emotionally intelligent debut thriller, (“Searching,” 2018), and seeing what crafty filmmakers can do with horror when they treat even a franchise title as something painfully real, (see David Gordon Green’s emotionally eviscerating “Halloween” sequel about the handed-down legacy of trauma), the entire premise of “Run” feels ripe for a haunting exploration of emotional horror and gaslighting manipulation.
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Frustratingly so, Changanty’s attempts at covering ideas of unscrupulous duplicity and gaslighting are hollow and surface at best. And “Run” is really interested in something more akin to a hunter and captive movie—the movie so foreign to anything resembling sincere emotion, one wonders why they bothered to write a mother/daughter story and not just leave it like the “Misery”-esque story it resembles.
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“Run” likes to think it has a clever, subversive twist on the idea of burdens and parents that believe in their children’s abilities despite the adversities they face. The movie centers on Chloe (Kiera Allen), a homeschooled teenager, who suspects her mother (Sarah Paulson) keeps a dark secret from her. And that’s because she is. So, no, Choe, who is physically disabled, isn’t a burden on her controlling mother at all. Actually, she’s the opposite. She’s a very intelligent victim of a mendacious sociopath who pretends to have total faith in her daughter when dealing with others. And she’s been sabotaging her child, her entire life, for monstrously selfish reasons.
Mom, Diane, is an odious monster. Chloe doesn’t know this yet, but she essentially learns the capacity of her mother’s evilness all of 17 minutes into the film (!). So, while, sure, she builds up clues in her detective work, the way “Run” is visibly crafted, the audience understands the very capable Chloe quickly learns the truth. Thus, there is almost no surprise or suspense for the rest of the 90-minute runtime.
“Run” is just this: Chloe suspects her mom is nuts and has been conspiring against her, her entire life in the most indescribably abusive ways; she learns more truths about her mother and is horrified by the betrayals as more evidence piles up. Mom discovers that Chloe knows her “secret” (of being a bad mom, don’t spoil it!), and the unmasked evil mom stops pretending she’s kind and caring and decides to be real. In this regard, “Run,” written by Chaganty and ”Searching” partner Sev Ohanian, also thinks it has something textured to say about the abusive parental notion of “Only I know what’s best for you.” But it doesn’t, and mostly reveals just how little these writers know about parents, children, or parent-child relationships and dynamics of any kind.
And that’s the truly maddening, even exasperating, part of “Run.” There’s so much potential to talk about the horrors of abuse, control, the way parents emotionally manipulate and gaslight their children, the unique frictions to be found in mother/daughter relationships, the way we lie to keep our children “safe,” the metaphor of parent as monster, and a billion other emotionally loaded topics about the way parents abuse the power they have over their children. The film is literally a veritable minefield of emotional horror, and there’s even a huge layup to be found in the ideas of just utterly crippling trauma — a heartbreaking tragedy that happened to Diane to explain her behavior.
“Run” is almost offensively superficial given how glibly it treats its subject matter and how contrived it is. It’s a film that can’t think deeper than when that psycho mom gets too needy and close; you need to run, man! You can never escape a mother’s love, “Run” wants to suggest with a twirl of its sinister mustache, and a comically-evil arched eyebrow, only, in this movie, it’s a mom whipping the omelet eggs with a vague smile/smirk on her face. Honey, I would never hurt you, I WWOVE U! Barf (the coldly conniving Paulson trope and how eerily serene she always plays these characters has become annoyingly cliched too).
“Run” is so unsophisticated, and clunky it’s painful. And a movie about a maliciously manipulative caretaker seems to be loaded to strike back with an emotionally lacerating reckoning like you’ve never seen.
Instead, however, Aneesh Chaganty’s godawful, “Run,” deeply fails on every level. There’s barely any suspense, thrills, or surprise, the deck is always infuriatingly stacked against Chloe in her various states of captivity, and when comeuppance finally arrives, there’s little, if any, satisfying catharsis. I’m a non-disabled person, so I can’t really speak to it too much, nor is it my experience, but “Run” also feels incredibly ableist in its use of Chloe as hostage and pawn to the plot and her mother’s insanity. “Run” is already manipulative in the way horror movies of this ilk typically are, and yes, the film obviously wants you to sympathize with Chloe. But the way it exploits her physical disadvantages for the sake of the plot—just enough that she can’t escape an average situation—feels a little gross. Actress Kiera Allen is actually a wheelchair user in real life, and “Run” feels, to me, self-satisfied in the way it writes her as so accomplished and astute. But in never really confronting or addressing the mother’s abuse in the film, in any meaningful way, nor gives the daughter much of a moment to damn her parent for the grotesque criminal abuse she’s harmed and deceived her with, “Run” seems to fail and cheat this character hard, especially with its final demented twist. A movie about a hideously unscrupulous caretaker, a mother, and her non-abled daughter, you’d think “Run” would treat these subjects carefully and with real considered empathy. But don’t be fooled, “Run” is just another riff on the “psycho mom” trope with no emotional insights into anyone or anything. [D]
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