‘Run Rabbit Run’ is Australia’s Answer To ‘Hereditary’

Motherhood is malignant in the upcoming Australian horror film, Run Rabbit Run.

The corruption of mothers and motherhood has long been a staple of horror. From tales of childless women being affiliated with Satanism, to Psycho, Rosemary’s Baby and beyond. In every era of history, there have been stories warning us of the underlying horror potential in the mother figure. Exactly what about the idea of motherhood is so frightening has varied over the centuries, but the mum and the powerful fear she instils is something humanity can’t quite shake.

As Sarah Arnold wrote in her book, Maternal Horror Film, “the horror film presents the mother as a site of both fascination and repulsion.” But this presentation is becoming more complicated as societal perceptions of motherhood progress.

Slowly dissipating are the days of Norman Bates’ possessive obsession in Psycho, or Joan Crawford’s adoption horror in Mommie Dearest. Since the 2010s, sympathetic mother figures have begun to dominate the horror film. A Quiet Place, The Babadook, Us, Heriditary, the recent batch of Halloween sequels, and even last year’s Barbarian all boast depictions of mothers who are as much victims as they are vessels for violence. In other words, humans.

Ari Aster’s 2018 horror movie, Hereditary, was the instant hit that arguably cemented this new sympathetic, complicated form of motherhood in horror. Iconically portrayed by Toni Collette, Hereditary’s protagonist Annie is a mum for whom motherhood is the unbidden inheritance of trauma passed down, even as the trauma goes unnamed and unknowable.

Part of what made Aster’s film so unforgettable is that the audience is not exempt from Annie’s inability to grasp a name for the pain her mother inspires. As we follow Annie’s desperate attempts to unravel her mother’s legacy, there is nary a scene that provides the audience with the relief of an answer. Like Annie, we’re doomed to see the horror to its end, even if we don’t quite know what it is.

Similarly, Daina Reid’s Australian horror feature Run Rabbit Run finds fertility doctor and mum Sarah (Sarah Snook) and her seven-year-old daughter, Mia (Lily LaTorre) muddling their way through the aftermath of Sarah’s father’s death. Like in Hereditary, loss rots the foundations of their lives. The past is a predator, and a death in the family has left blood in the water.

Sarah’s nightmares, in which she is a small figure pressed into sweeping aerial shots of the harsh South Australian wilderness, destabilise their business as usual front. So does Mia’s sudden and unsettling conviction that she is her mother’s missing sister. Mia starts insisting she misses Sarah’s estranged mother. But how could her daughter miss a grandmother she’s never known?

“I miss people I’ve never met all the time,” Mia replies when Sarah asks, and the chilling remark marks the start of an unrelenting descent into the family’s calamitous hidden past. Except, no, descent is not quite the right word.

As Annie is in Hereditary, grieving mother Sarah is hunted by a violent past possessing her child. Despite the women’s best efforts, unspeakable actions that pre-date their children corrupt their children before their eyes. For all the world, motherhood is not the antidote to their trauma, but a promise that it will be passed on.

Neither Heriditary, nor Run Rabbit Run provide relief in an explanation. There is no moment where the mums in these stories figure out how to save their children. Instead, their denial of the past, their fear of it, dooms them. The mother’s unresolved trauma, as sympathetic as it is, is passed along to their children.

Either way, if you loved Hereditary, but thought it could do with some Australian gothic vibes, and Succession’s Sarah Snook, Run Rabbit Run is the film for you. You only have to wait until June 28 to watch it on Netflix.

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Merryana Salem (they/them) is a proud Wonnarua and Lebanese–Australian writer, critic, teacher and podcaster on most social media as @akajustmerry.