Movie Review - Run (2020)

Aneesh Chaganty has provided a second feature that feels analogous or parallel in some thematic fashion to his first feature. His debut was Searching (2018), which was about a parent doing what he can to protect his child. Here, Chaganty with his co-writer Sev Ohanian tells another story about a parent doing what she can to protect her child. The difference though is that here the parent is protecting the child from a danger and a threat of the parent's own making. Chaganty seems interested in parenthood, particularly that of single parents whose roles as parents become all-consuming, especially consumed with worry and fear, and the lengths those parents will go to get and to hold onto their children. Both films are thrillers, but, Searching casts the parent in a more heroic role where the parent realizes that there are things about his child he didn't know or were kept hidden. Here, the parent is cast in a more villainous role and conversely the child realizes that there are things about her parent that she didn't know or were kept hidden.

Sarah Paulson (Mrs. America and American Crime Story) stars as Diane Sherman, a woman living outside of Seattle, Washington, or near it. She lives in a really, nice, country house in a largely rural area with no nearby neighbors, probably for miles, and the only visitor is the mail carrier. This is notable because Diane has a teenage daughter who needs to use a wheelchair. Yet, they live in such an isolated area. One would think that if you have a special needs child or a disabled child, you would want to be closer to town and to resources if something goes wrong. Yet, Diane wants to remain isolated and in control of everything her daughter does, as well as be her sole provider.

Kiera Allen, in her feature debut, co-stars as Chloe Sherman, the daughter to Diane. She is partially paralyzed, unable to use her legs, so she uses a wheelchair. She also has other medical conditions, several of them. She's diabetic and she's asthmatic, as the two most pronounced. Because she also has all these other conditions, it makes even less sense that her mother would have her living out in the middle of nowhere. What if there's an emergency? How long would it take to get Chloe to a hospital? The farther away they are makes it likely that something could go wrong and they would waste time traveling to a hospital. Chloe seems like a rather well-adjusted teenage girl otherwise who is studying science, in part due to her mother's home schooling, and Chloe wants to attend college at the University of Washington. She's 17 and has applied. She's now simply waiting for a response by mail from UW.

Unfortunately, Chaganty's script doesn't really investigate other things a teenage girl might have as interests, other than going to college. As a teenage girl, she's likely started menstruating. As such, it's likely she's started having sexual thoughts. As such, she's likely wanted to socialize with other teenagers and have friends. In the Emmy-winning The Act (2019), which has a similar premise, having friends and having sex were major sticking points for the wheelchair-bound daughter named Gypsy Rose. It's odd that Chloe's socialization and sexual preferences aren't an issue or even raised in this film.

If one knows what happens in The Act, then one knows that it's a crazy true story. Chaganty's film ups the ante on the craziness here, so much that it starts to strain credulity. If The Act weren't based on a true story, one might accuse it of straining credulity as well, but, the series paints a fuller picture of both parent and child. It was a miniseries, so it had the time to do so, but this film isn't that long. It could have taken a few extra minutes to dive deeper because one really has to suspend a lot of disbelief or suspend a lot of curiosity to accept the reality of this film. Does Diane have no family? What happened to the father of her baby? There's a couple of deaths in this film and there's no explanation of what happened to their bodies, particularly the body of the first death in the film.

What this film explores is the condition of Munchausen By Proxy. The Act did the same, but it complicated the situation with someone who was also just suffering from Munchausen's syndrome. It complicated the situation because between parent and child, it wasn't all together clear who was more damaged or who was more sick. This film makes the lines more black-and-white. There's a clear hero and villain. At that, the film becomes a compelling thrill ride of how far will the villain go and if the hero can overcome. In that, this film throws some exciting obstacles into the narrative.

Of course, the obvious criticism would be the fact that an actual disabled person wasn't used in this film. However, Kiera Allen is a wheelchair user. There probably aren't that many actresses in wheelchairs that can be drawn, which is the common defense, but that defense isn't needed here. Yet, it still has to be noted that actual, disabled actors should be utilized more, especially in stories about them. That being said, the film does engage with the idea of how a disabled person would fight back and defeat someone who was working against them or forcing them to do something against their will.

The themes and scenario are different, but a recent film that puts disabled people in the forefront of a thriller is The Paramedic (2020), starring Mario Casas. This film makes the disabled person's fight a bit more difficult and almost impossible. However, The Paramedic is a bit more feasible or believable a scenario. By the end, I simply don't accept that the villain here could have gotten away with what she does for as long as she did. The villain in The Paramedic certainly didn't. It's contrived, but both actresses give incredible performances, especially Paulson who reminded me of Kathy Bates in Misery (1990). This would make Allen the young female version of James Caan and she's doing just as good, if not better than him in that 1990 Oscar-winner.

Rated PG-13 for disturbing content, some violence, terror and language.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 29 mins.

Available on Hulu.