Run (2020)

 Score: 3.5 / 5

The newest entry in the psycho-biddy subgenre, Run is currently only available to stream on Hulu. It's the kind of movie I usually like anyway, even if others find it a little too old-fashioned and predictable. But a movie that works by isolating people, locking them inside and preying on our latent fears about family and trust, hits differently in a year defined by staying at home. It's the second feature for director Aneesh Chaganty, following 2018's Searching, which similarly used a familiar and even trite premise to great effect, slow-burning the plot until its suspense became almost too much to bear. This one works pretty well, too, though the story is anything but novel; here it's all about the acting, and Chaganty's directing abilities if not his writing.

Newcomer Kiera Allen plays Chloe, a high school senior eagerly awaiting acceptance to the University of Washington. Homeschooled and relatively homebound her entire life, she battles no less than five chronic illnesses (described to us in the opening text of the film) from the confines of her wheelchair. Thankfully, she is homeschooled and cared for dutifully by her helicopter mother Diane, played by Sarah Paulson. But when, by accident, Chloe sees a prescription pill bottle with Diane's name on it -- pills that are regularly fed to Chloe -- she begins to wonder if something is wrong. As Diane clearly covers it up (literally, as Chloe later sees the bottle with another label covering up its true addressee), Chloe is increasingly frustrated and scared when her attempts to learn more are met with subterfuge, lies, and even hostility.

Chloe is, in many ways, a sitting duck, and when the internet goes out, she gets desperate to learn what pills she's really taking. Allen proves a fabulously capable actress, carrying the weight of the movie and getting us instantly to recognize and feel the wheels turning in her mind. Despite her reliance on her wheelchair (Allen herself uses a wheelchair, in a rather rare occurrence of disability representation in casting choices), Chloe is forced into serious physical situations that risk and sometimes score bodily injury. Countering her in a psychological cat-and-mouse game is her own mother in the kind of role Paulson does better than any other actress working today. Diane's sickly-sweet demeanor belies a potential for madness simmering beneath the surface. First we wonder if she's a crazy, the sort of "bad mother" that gives undergrad seminars lots of fodder for discussion. Then, and quite quickly, we are only meant to wonder how long it will take for Chloe to rescue herself from her predicament.

There's nothing particularly fresh about the content, but Chaganty keeps the mercifully short running time tight with tension, ratcheting up our anxieties with a calculated cruelty. But the joys of the terribly titled Run mostly belong to its stars, a pair of brilliant actresses at the top of their games. One, a seasoned veteran doing what she does best; the other, a breakthrough leading lady who manages to control and convey each step of emotion through the deadly mystery around her through mostly wordless sequences. Even as the film teeters away from its Hitchcockian premise and into Stephen King spectacle, Chaganty and his stars keep things believable, grounded, spooky, and lots of fun.