RUN

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

In effect, Run is Misery for Gen Z. I suppose that might pique the interest of boomers more than Genzers. Do the latter even know about Misery? They should; it’s a definitively better movie—but, this one is still lots of fun, and to the credit of director and co-writer Aneesh Chaganty (Searching), he gives clear credit to Misery as an influence, with a particular character being a sort of Easter-egg reference to it. I won’t spoil it; you’ll have to catch it while watching it yourself.

For most of Run, there are all of two characters: the protagonist, Chloe, a sickly wheelchair user who is homeschooled—and otherwise excessively sheltered—by her mother, Diane. It’s not really a spoiler to state that Diane is the absolute villain here, and it’s fun to see Sarah Paulson playing such a role rather than as a victim of the many horrors she endures as characters on American Horror Story. Most interestingly, Choe is played by Kiera Allen, a very young actor who happens to be actually a wheelchair user. And while it’s pertinent to note the rarity of disabled actors being cast in parts that are disabled characters, a curious twist in this casting is that Chloe, the character, was not only never meant to be disabled, but presumably, without her mother’s interference, she would actually not be a wheelchair user now at all.

Because Diane, you see, has some kind of mental illness that, I suppose, comes closest to Munchausen By Proxy: in a bent response to a tragic turn of events with her baby delivered some seventeen or so years ago, she is feeding Chloe multiple medications that cause the very ailments she claims they are meant to improve. In fact, the opening title card offers specific definitions to five of them: athsma, arrhythmia, hemochromatosis, diabetes and paralysis. Some of these play into the plot more readily than others, particularly the athsma (with Chloe fighting for breath on multiple occasions), and of course the most visibly obvious one, paralysis. We do see her taking what are at first assumed to be insulin shots, though, and syringes do later play key parts in plot turns, as do the medications Chloe has been told are for the other conditions.

It’s only when Chloe is rummaging through a grocery bag and discovers a bottle of pills actually prescribed to Diane that she begins to suspect something is amiss. Eventually, things like Chloe’s long wait for unanswered college applications start to come into sharper focus for her. Side note, speaking of colleges: Run is set in a small town in Western Washington, although it was filmed entirely in Canada and mostly in Winnipeg, of all places—but, Chloe’s clearly top choice of college is Seattle’s own University of Washington, which gets an almost absurd amount of product placement in this film. I wonder what kind of deal was struck for that?

Anyway, unlike in Misery, in Run the protagonist is not bed ridden through most of the movie; in fact, Chloe is given a pretty atypical amount of agency for disabled characters usually seen in movies. Her mother is still effectively keeping her captive, though, and Chaganty creates very effective, meticulously edited sequences—which he openly states are mostly influenced by Alfred Hitchcock and M. Night Shyamalan—where Chloe is persistently getting the best of her limitations, the very ones that her mother has created for her. One such sequence with Chloe making her way from her bedroom window around the roof of her house and over to her mom’s bedroom window is especially nail biting.

I’d be curious to hear how disabled people, and wheelchair users in particular, respond to this movie. It’s entirely possible it misses something crucial that my own biases are preventing me from seeing. But, barring that, it strikes me as a step in the right direction to allow a disabled character to exist on her own terms, even in a trashy thriller. Because, lets face it, that’s what Run really is: a trashy thriller. It’s also a very good one, as trashy thrillers go.

It’s also somewhat surprisingly subtle. This is, perhaps, the difference between “thriller” and “horror,” in that horror is much more inclined to go over the top, which Run never does. It traffics less in shocks than in suspense, and it’s better for it. When it comes to new, feature-length content on streaming services in 2020 (this one can be found on Hulu), you could do a lot worse. I enjoyed it enough to recommend it.

A new challenge of wits between daughter and mother.

B+