The 2023 release Australian psychological horror thriller will have you questioning your reality just like Sarah, our main lead, played by actress Sarah Snook, who many may know from the popular series, Succession. Directed by Daina Reid and Written by Hannah Kent, the movie is uncomfortable and full of secrets, but it is also very familiar and lacks a unique quality.
Run Rabbit Run follows the story of Sarah, a fertility doctor by profession and a single mother at home, and how she starts noticing the strangeness of her daughter’s behavior after the two come down to visit Sarah’s mother, Joan.
Mia, Sarah’s daughter, claims to be not Mia but Alice, Sarah’s sister, whom she ended up losing when she was just seven. Mia’s claims about being Alice confuse her and force her to question her reality, whether Mia has memories of her previous life where she actually was Alice or if she has been possessed by a ghost of Alice.
Fans can either watch the movie or may continue reading till the end to find out. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2023 and was recently made available on Netflix for fans to stream.
The movie is good enough for a psychological thriller and seems to have a sense of direction with scenes that add to its elegance. But on the other hand, if you watch too many thriller movies and shows, you might be able to predict the general flow of the movie and may even guess its end.
It offers nothing uniquely new and feels more like an amalgamation of a lot of different psychological horror films. The movie ended with somewhat of an open ending, leaving some aspects open to the audience for their interpretation.
If you are one of the few of wish to find a clear-cut answer regarding the movie and its characters, then continue scrolling till the end.
What Happened To Mia In Run Rabbit Run?
The movie reveals what happened to Sarah’s daughter, Mia, right before rolling the credits, where it is revealed that she ends up jumping off the cliff while holding hands with a possible ghost of Alice and possibly dies. Mia becomes the trigger for Sarah’s repressed guilt, and in the act of trying to get her mother to confess what she did and get justice for young and innocent Alice, she also ends up meeting the same fate as her Alice.
At the start of the movie, we see Sarah, a single mother, be so good to her daughter, Mia that it makes us feel wholesome, but somewhere along the half-time mark, Sarah becomes the mother we wish nobody would ever have. We see Mia get her hands on a photograph of Joan, her grandmother, and Sarah’s mother. Upon seeing it, Mia makes it her life’s purpose to push her mother and force her to take her to see her grandmother.
And while all of this is happening, Mia also starts with her ridiculous claims, saying that she is not, in fact, Mia, but Sarah’s lost sister Alice, after she spots a rabbit somewhere close to their house. She says she is the reincarnation of Alice, but Sarah treats it as just a silly remark. Now even though Joan and Sarah do not particularly share a great relationship, Sarah believes that going back to her old house may help Mia get over her delusion.
But this plan seems to seriously backfire, as Mia’s delusional claims only seem to get stronger. She insists on sleeping in Alice’s old room and wearing her old clothes from when she was seven, the same age as Mia and also the age when she disappeared.
Back To Where It All Started
The old house not only screws further with Mia and her actions, but it also plays into Sarah’s memories. We see her have a vision from her childhood, where she was playing with Alice, but the play somehow got turned into a really bad physical fight, and she ended up hurting Alice really badly and eventually pushed her off the cliff where their house was still standing.
It is as Sarah continues to lose her mind with visions of Alice everywhere and Mia saying things only Alice would know that we find at one time that Mia has gone missing.
This is scary for Sarah as she frantically starts looking for her daughter only to find her hidden in the bushes, and right next to her, she sees a ghost of Alice. They run back to the house, calm down, and at night both the mother and daughter sleep together.
The next morning Sarah wakes up to an empty space next to her, and Mia is nowhere to be found. But quickly enough, she finds her daughter outside, holding hands with a ghost version of seven-year-old Alice that only Sarah sees, and the two continue to walk toward the edge of the cliff, leaving Sarah locked inside where the only thing she can do is bang on the window and beg for her daughter to come back.
Final Revelations
We know that it was Sarah who killed her sister when they were young, and it was also her who pushed her off the cliff so that her body could never be found. Alice’s murder was done out of malice and hatred, but it was still too much for a young Sarah, who could not remember what she did till the end.
Her daughter claiming to be Alice and Sarah making the decision to walk back to the very place which ruined her, followed by her having visions of her dead sister, are all indications of her repressed memories trying to crawl back out for Sarah to face them.
It could have been all in her head, or it could have all been real. The fact remains that Sarah’s unconscious tries to force her to deal with her actions, and her consciousness tries to keep it buried deep within, and this conflict took another innocent life, the guilt of which will surely come back to her.
The movie ends with Mia’s possible death. Now was it because she voluntarily walked off the cliff as the movie showed, or was it because, just like Alice, Sarah pushed Mia, who she thought to be Alice, off the cliff? The answer to this question really depends on what you feel would have been more twisted and horrifying.
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