WHAT’S IT ABOUT
The film follows a mother-daughter duo, Diane and Chloe Sherman. Chloe is born with special health needs and Diane rises to the occasion, ready and willing to be a full-time caregiver to her daughter. By the time Chloe is a teenager, though, she begins to sense that something isn’t quite right with her mom and decides to go digging for the truth. Turns out, Diane has been keeping some big secrets from her daughter, throwing them both into a cat-and-mouse game as Chloe tries to escape mom’s grip and get help.
MOVIESinMO REVIEW
To sum this movie up in one word – tense. The fact that I knew what the story was made it that much more stressful. If you’ve seen the trailer, you know there’s something “not right” about the mother, Diane Sherman (Sarah Paulson). So from the time you Diane on-screen, you’re waiting for her to be that crazy controlling mother like the one in Mommy Dearest. Well, that’s not what happened. What does happen is a lot more intense as you never know just how far the mother will go to protect her daughter who uses a wheelchair, Chloe Sherman (Kiera Allen). Once Chloe starts to become suspicious of her mother, situations intensify. At first, you never quite know when the distrust between mother and daughter began. You only know it had been building long before any supposed evidence was found. Is Diane overprotective, or are her worries regarding her daughter’s multiple illnesses validated? From a teens point of view, Chloe is doing what almost every eighteen years old do – they fight authority at every turn, especially when they want something. Chloe wanted to go to college. Basically, anywhere but home. So, the tension was there before the skepticism. This is why RUN excels in its efforts to thrill and captivate the audience. You have a girl with arrhythmia, hemochromatosis, diabetes, and paralysis seemingly held hostage by her loving mother. Chloe claims her mother is trying to kill her, but if she was, why would she wait until she graduated high school? Diane says her daughter has been acting insane ever since one of her many medications changed. This is how the movie plays out until the truth is discovered, and the parent-daughter relationship comes to a head. I was upset through some scenes while cheering in others, but that’s the kind of emotion a good film produces. For what it’s worth, RUN is a great film with a classic Hitchock feel to it but may be a bit slow by today’s standards.
OUR RATING – A NOSTALGIC 7