RUN (2020) – Neat little thriller with Sarah Paulson
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Sarah Paulson plays a single mother bringing up her daughter who was born prematured and with multiple illnesses that will make her disabled for life. The story picks up when the girl has grown into a teenager who begins to suspect something isn’t right about her condition and relation with her mother.
As a thriller, Run, works very well. It is well paced, and offers a compelling story and most important of all, has strong performances from its two main stars, Sarah Paulson and first timer Kiera Allen as the daughter. If I have to chose which role was more challenging of the two, it will most certainly have to be that of the daughter. Kiera Allen plays a convincing disabled teenager and she has some really difficult physical scenes to act which she managed to execute well. Sarah Paulson’s character required her to act her usual self and was probably not a challenge for her to play as she has done these sort of roles very often.
Run is written and directed by Aneesh Chaganty, an Indian American film maker whose first work, “Searching” made quite a buzz in the Sundance Film Festival of 2018 where it won him the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize. He certainly has a flair for the thriller genre and made a right chose to keep the film’s running time at 90 minutes. I like that he didn’t feel the need to inject any gimmicky scares or extreme gore to provide the thrills. The final act was a bit of a disappointment as the surprise was not that difficult to be guessed, and its idea of fates of the protagonists felt a bit contrived. I would have preferred an ending with a more positive note.