Sundance Film Festival 2023: RUN RABBIT RUN & TALK TO ME

Horror films tend to explore familiar premises and thematic ideas, but as time has always shown, it’s about how you play with your toys. With this year’s Sundance Film Festival, two horror/thriller titles carry an energy of “we’ve seen this before”. But while one lacks narrative momentum to stand out, the other manages to spin a fresh confident take thanks to its personality.

Run Rabbit Run (Daina Reid)

Netflix’s latest horror acquisition Run Rabbit Run joins films like The Babadook and your latest Rebecca Hall nervous breakdown thriller, as it tells the story of Sarah (Sarah Snook), a single mother who struggles to make sense of her daughter Mia (Lily LaTorre) and her increasingly strange behavior since her 7th birthday. As Mia begins to recall names and events that she was never around for, Sarah is forced to confront her traumatic past.

Typically, when it comes to this kind of subgenre, the female lead performance should be enough to carry the film to the finish line. Though Snook is indeed phenomenal here, Run Rabbit Run is saddled with a script that’s too repetitive and problematic editing choices that fragment any hard-earned suspense. Director Daina Reid has a firm and solid hand on atmosphere and tension. Her sensibilities with location, camerawork, and lighting provide the right amount of spooky thrills and uncomfortable mysteries.

Unfortunately, Reid and Snook can only offer so much, and with the writing, they seem to offer the same thing over and over. Much of the film’s first and second act involves Mia doing something annoying, which leads to Sarah telling her to stop, which leads to Mia talking back to her, which leads to Sarah yelling at her, which leads to Mia saying something creepy, which leads to Sarah looking confused and walking away. Rinse and repeat, until it’s finally time for the script to reveal what happened during Sarah’s childhood.

Though the twist at the third act does offer some gasps and true horrors, with Snook giving a terrific performance in coming to grips with her character’s past, the story disappoints. Right when a scene is about to get interesting, where a conflict finally escalates past a point of no return, the film resorts to cutting to black or fading to black and moving on – a frustrating “way out” for the film, which results in a tremendous loss of narrative momentum. The worst part is the film constantly uses this cut-to-black method, as if every scene doesn’t know how to end or transition properly to the next.

Run Rabbit Run is sadly the most generic kind of psychological thriller. Mood and atmosphere is simply not enough. You can have a great lead performance, but if the film struggles to maintain momentum in its pacing and doesn’t quite know how to handle its disturbing subject matter, it’s hard to be emotionally invested, let alone scared.

Run Rabbit Run premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.

Talk to Me (Michael Philippou and Danny Philippou)

When people discover a dark magical object that allows them to talk to dead spirits, what’s the first thing they do? Start a new social media trend around it, of course! That is what our typical dumb horror teenagers do in Talk to Me, as they play with an embalmed hand that allows them to have a seance every time someone shakes it and says “Talk to me”.

Of these teenagers, Mia (Sophie Wilde) is the most curious to see whether this supernatural “Truth or Dare” is actually legit. Perhaps that is the film’s greatest strength – early on in the film, as Mia tries the embalmed hand for the first time, filmmakers Michael and Danny Philippou answer our question with little to no ambiguity. Mia says “Talk to me” and BAM! A gross, gnarly dead body sits right in front of her, the shot presented to us in profile view. There’s little jump scare or loud sound effects. It just cuts to the dead person, in a matter-of-fact way. It brings back fond memories of how Mike Flanagan directs horror – letting the horrific imagery speak for itself.

Of course, with these teenagers playing with death like it’s Flatliners for the TikTok age, it’s only a matter of time before the seance goes absolutely wrong. When it does, Talk to Me becomes more of a companion piece to something like Insidious, as one of Mia’s friends becomes trapped in the spiritual world. For Mia herself, it’s only the beginning of her nightmare, as she starts to have visions of her dead mother, not knowing for sure if it’s actually a chance to communicate or if it’s all an illusion.

Though Talk to Me doesn’t do anything new on a writing level, much credit needs to be given to the filmmakers in sticking to its simple premise to offer some fresh scares. The straightforward cinematography allows the film’s gnarly and stunning makeup work to shine. With the Philippou’s setting the tone so early on in how batshit crazy the characters are in messing with the supernatural, it makes perfect sense for the film later on to be so gross and nasty in its violence and practical effects. Essentially, the film rallies around its one go-to party trick, and thankfully it works.

Wilde gives a terrific lead performance, as Mia tries to make sense of her new situation and struggles to right some of her wrongs. Though a couple story beats in the third act raised some eyebrows in terms of whether they were real or not, the script keeps Mia’s plight front and center, as it holds a consistent level of energy to its horror that kept me interested from start to finish. With that level of confidence, Talk to Me may be familiar but it’s a fun scary time.

Talk to Me premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.