Run Rabbit Run: Sarah Snook’s post-Succession Netflix thriller disappoints

Run Rabbit Run (TBC, 100mins) Directed by Daina Reid **½

Even before she became a global superstar thanks to playing Shiv Roy on Succession, Sarah Snook was already turning heads with a succession of fabulous film performances.

After a breakthrough gender-bending role in 2014 sci-fi tale Predestination drew comparisons with the best of Tilda Swinton, the Adelaide-born actor impressed essaying key characters in Australian hits The Dressmaker and Oddball, before she landed Hollywood movies like Steve Jobs, The Glass Castle, Winchester, Pieces of a Woman and An American Pickle.

Now she’s back on home soil, headlining a psychological thriller directed by Offspring, The Handsmaid’s Tale and Shining Girls regular helmer Daina Reid and written by best-selling author Hannah Kent (Burial Rites, Devotion).

Unfortunately, even Snook at her most animated and convincing can’t save this predictable, pedestrian tale that feels like a sub-par mix of The Babadook, Relic, Petit Maman and Nanny, as it twists and turns –and strains – towards a totally telegraphed denouement.

It is a shame because the production design is solid, the settings suitable atmospheric and the likes of Snook, Greta Scacchi and young Lily LaTorre certainly don’t disgrace themselves.

They just seem let down by a story that never really engages, let alone enthrals, while Reid and Kent appear heavy-handed with the symbolism (especially when it comes to characters having “blood on their hands” with regards to past actions).

Snook is Sarah, a fertility doctor and solo mum still coming to terms with both the failure of her marriage and the recent death of her father. Events – and emotions – come to a head during daughter Mia’s (LaTorre) seventh birthday party when estranged husband Peter (Damon Herriman) announces that he and his new partner are trying for a baby and a rabbit mysteriously turns up on their doorstep. When Sarah tries to shoo it away, it bites her.

Over the next few days, her usually carefully controlled world goes south, as Mia’s behaviour becomes increasingly bizarre, including taking to constantly wearing a rabbit mask and making a request to visit the long-estranged, hospitalised grandmother (Scacchi) she has never met.

And if Mia’s bleeding nose and hitting a bird while on the long journey aren’t portentous enough, then the fact that grandma Joan insists that Mia is actually Sarah’s long dead sister Alice really makes the whole trip as nightmarish as Sarah feared. To make matters worse, once they’ve returned home, Mia starts scribbling dark images on the back of her homework, struggles to control her anxiety and insists on being called Alice.

From there, you kind of know how Run Rabbit Run is going to pan out, with only Snook’s deft handling of her character’s descent into mania saving this from completely derailing into an unwatchable mess. File under disappointing.

Run Rabbit Run is now available to stream on Netflix.