RUN: A tense, simple horror film
You know what really grinds my gears? Complicated ass movies. Movie where there are a thousand characters for example. Sometimes those thousand characters are unimportant but still the creative crew introduced them to me like unnecessary information in a 7th grade math problem. Even worse, is when the characters are actually important to the story. I can’t tell you how many times I watched The Godfather before I realized that the dude that helps Michael in the hospital is actually Enzo, the son in law of the baker we meet in the beginning of the movie. Along with an overabundance of characters, I also am slightly perturbed by a complicated and wandering story. Honestly, if you need to do a black and white flashback at the end of the movie to recap everything I missed, or your main character needs to sit down and talk to the camera about what is going on, then it's too complicated and you need to stop. Fortunately for me I ran into neither one of this irritations when I watched the Hulu original and one of the best horror movies of 2020 RUN.
From the creative team behind Searching, the film stars Sarah Paulson as Diane Sherman, the mother of a very premature baby that doctors are resuscitating when the film opens. With a hand on the incubator, she asks, “Will the baby be okay?” to which the nameless faceless doctors in the background are hesitant to answer. We are then given a black screen with a list of ailments including asthma, heart palpitations, diabetes and paralysis. I thought this scene was pretty cool, they could have spent all sorts of time in the film explaining all of the child’s ailments but instead they kept it simple and gave the viewers a black screen with dictionary definitions, it’s simple and beautiful.
The film then jumps forward 17 years in time to a home school parents work group filled with sobbing parents that are upset their children are going away to college. Diane chimes in with confidence that her daughter, Chloe, has gone through more mental and physical pain than anyone, she is smart and intelligent and if there is any child that is ready for college, it’s her. We then meet Chloe at home, waking up and getting into her wheelchair, checking her insulin in the morning with mom, reading and studying, taking her numerous pills, checking her insulin again and if it’s low enough, indulging in chocolates with her mother. One day, their sweet wholesome life turns sideways when Diane is bringing in the groceries and Chloe decides to sneak a couple of chocolates. She notices in the grocery back a small green and grey pill that is prescribed to her mother and becomes curious, “What’s wrong with mom?”
She grows even more curious when that same green and grey pill ends up in her nightly pills and she really wonders, “What’s wrong with mom?”. Chloe asks her mother about it, but Diane convinces her she read the label wrong. Chloe sneaks to get the pill bottle and notices her mother removed the label saying it was prescribed to Diane and replaces it with a label that says Chloe. GASP! She tries to use the internet late at night to find out about the pill, Trigoxin, but the internet is down. GASP! She then tries to call the pharmacy, but hangs up because they will tell her mother. She calls 411 to get a number to another pharmacy but there is a charge for 411 and her mom would find out. Finally she calls a random number and asks the dude on the phone to Google Trigoxin only to reveal it’s a small red pill and not a green and grey one. TRIPLE FUCKING GASP! What on earth is her mother giving her? Eventually she talks her mother into taking her to a movie, Chloe excuses herself to use the restroom but rushes out of the theatre and across the street to the pharmacy to find out about the pill and that when it’s revealed it’s a muscle relaxer for dogs that causes numbness in the legs. Chloe is shocked, Mom arrives and sedates her and the whole film kicks into high gear.
This movie is very, very tense. It’s not a horror movie in the sense of Mom popping out of the shadows with an axe scary but more of HURRY UP CHLOE YO MOMMA GONNA CATCH YOU! Scary. There is a very simple opening to the film that gives you all the details you need, Chloe, her mom and something weird going on and then it’s off to the races. This is an absolutely incredible film that instantly went on my list of best films of the year. A very simple film that has more Stephen King/Misery references than it does characters. Excellent execution with only one main flaw, it’s on Hulu and that means Canada can’t get this amazing film. Bummer! (editor note: DAMN YOU HULU)
Don’t want to miss anything on the site? Sign up for our newsletter HERE
Want more horror movie reviews? Just search below:
