[Review] Run(2020) {7/10}

Directed by Aneesh Chaganty and written by Chaganty and Sev Ohanian. The film stars Kiera Allen (Chloe Sherman), Sarah Paulson (Diane Sherman) and Pat Healy (Mailman Tom).

The plot follows a 17-year-old Chloe (Kiera Allen) who lives a solitary life except for her mother Diane (Sarah Paulson), who tends to her daughter's every medical need and has done so for her entire life. Chloe supposedly suffers from arrhythmia, hemochromatosis, asthma, diabetes, and paralysis of her legs, the latter of which has required her to be in a wheelchair for as long as she can remember. The only problem is that Chloe starts to realize some oddities about the care her mother provides. Chloe's extremely limited freedoms are odd, the way her mother always gets to the mail before Chloe is odd, the way the Wi-Fi doesn't work when her mother isn't home is odd. Some of the medicine her mother gives her isn't what it seems. If Chloe had to escape her mother, how exactly could she manage that? What lengths would her mother go to stop her?

Not a deep look into the behavioral and mental health complexities and nuances of Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another, this thriller only wants to thrill, and it just about does. In terms of quality, pace, writing, acting, and thrills, Run is on par with and sometimes exceeds director Aneesh Chaganty's first feature, the chillingly disturbing Searching. For Run, Chaganty structures his focus on child abuse and parental derangement in three acts: family horror, hostage drama, escape thriller. By the time the pace ramps up entering the finale, lead character Chloe has more than earned her freedom. Run is a platform for two great performances, one a terribly menacing desperate mother from Sarah Paulson and the other a courageous first-time lead achievement for Kiera Allen, who is also a wheelchair user in real life. In some other ways, by the time the epilogue rolls, some viewers may find some logical gaps and inconsistencies, even if parsing them out would have only likely bogged things down. There's a distinct lack of any scenes of Chloe's childhood or growing up alone with no friends, television, public life outside visiting the pharmacy, or grander curiosity about the outside world. Somehow, Chloe made it all the way to 17 before really questioning or seeing the horrible things her mother was doing. Lastly, the film's ending may leave some viewers disappointed.

Run is now available on Hulu.