Run (2020)
“Hollywood frequently pigeonholes filmmakers of color into only telling stories about their own communities. It’s exciting to see Run depart from that harmful trend.”
Title: Run (2020)
Director: Aneesh Chaganty 👨🏽🇺🇸
Writers: Aneesh Chaganty 👨🏽🇺🇸 and Sev Ohanian 👨🏽🇩🇪🇺🇸
Reviewed by Alicja Johnson 👩🏼🇺🇸
—MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD—
Technical: 4/5
Fresh off the success of his directorial debut Searching (2018), writer-director Aneesh Chaganty is back with another thrilling mystery. The Hulu Original film Run follows homeschooled teenager Chloe (Kiera Allen) and her overprotective single mother, Diane (Sarah Paulson). Paralyzed from the waist down and diagnosed with asthma, a heart arrhythmia, hemochromatosis, and diabetes, Chloe’s daily life necessitates a strict regimen carefully dictated by her mother. Of course, this is a horror film so it doesn’t take long before Chloe realizes Diane is up to something nefarious.
You won’t find many jump scares in Run. Rather, Chaganty carefully builds tension to make us experience the same dread Chloe feels upon realizing that the one person she trusts—her mother—is literally and figuratively poisoning her.
Though the movie occasionally takes us outside their home, we do spend significant time indoors. Without compelling performances, strong pacing, and a focused directorial vision, limited-location films can easily become onerous viewing. (This year’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things immediately comes to mind.) Fortunately, Run has all three of these requisites and particularly shines in the acting department.
We first meet Paulson with her eyes locked on a prematurely-born Chloe, embodying the fear and concern innate to seeing your child in danger. Diane’s believable motherly devotion in moments like these makes the sinister side that Paulson gradually unveils all the more jarring.
The real star of this story, however, is Kiera Allen. For several stretches of the film, we watch Chloe navigate her situation alone in the house—from figuring out exactly what medication Diane has been feeding her to escaping from her barricaded bedroom, even when it means crawling onto the roof through the brute strength of her arms alone. Although these sequences lack dialogue, Allen grips us with her performance, wordlessly communicating both the “what” and “why” of Chloe’s maneuvers. Under Chaganty’s direction, Allen delivers some of the best onscreen action this year.
The one component of Run that does fall a bit short occurs through Diane. I found myself craving more backstory to better understand her character. While Chaganty and his co-writer and producer Sev Ohanian give us a reason for Diane’s erratic behavior, it doesn’t feel entirely sufficient. From Alfred Hitchcock’s women to more recent examples like Amy Dunne in 2014’s Gone Girl adaptation, filmmakers tend to villainize female characters with the “crazy” label. So without deeper consideration of Diane’s motivations, Run feels slightly disingenuous in this respect.
Gender: 5/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test?: YES
Refreshingly, conversations in Run almost always pass the Bechdel Test, underscoring that men have little importance in this tale. (We might be able to count the number of films that pass with such flying colors on a single hand). The movie doesn’t overtly promote a feminist message, nor does it ignore gender altogether in favor of characters who could just as easily be male. It’s simply a female-centric story with characters made all the more believable by the ways gender shapes life experiences.
In the case of Diane, for example, we learn that she endured a stillbirth, which impacts 1 in 160 deliveries and takes a serious toll on families’ wellbeing (particularly that of the mother). We also see Chloe fall prey to her mother’s gaslighting, a manipulation tactic more frequently wielded against women than men, according to experts. Thinking about how most films define female players by the men around them, we ought to celebrate that Run characterizes Diane and Chloe with traits informed by the real circumstances women face every day.
Race: 3.75/5
While the cast of Run is mostly white, it never feels out of place given the tiny cast and small-town setting in the outskirts of Seattle. The mother-daughter duo drives the action and leaves little room for any meaningful tertiary characters in general.
That being said, Nurse Kammy merits a mention. Played by Korean American actor Sara Sohn, during her few minutes of screentime she has a major role in saving Chloe’s life.
We should also recognize the diversity behind the camera, as Chaganty himself is the son of immigrants from Hyderabad in India. Ohanian and fellow producer Natalie Qasabian both identify as Armenian American. Considering that the industry frequently pigeonholes filmmakers of color by only allowing them to tell stories about a specific community, it’s exciting to see Run depart from that harmful trend.
Bonus for Disability: +0.50
The thriller genre is notorious for harmful depictions of disability, often designating people with mental or physical differences as monsters. Even the most progressive creators contribute to this, as we saw with Lupita Nyong'o’s use of spasmodic dysphonia symptoms in 2019’s Us. As for Run, Chaganty sets one positive example of representation by centering a wheelchair user as its protagonist. However, it still trades in some of the above, in particular by sensationalizing Diane’s disorder, which is never explicitly diagnosed but clearly alludes to Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome (MBP).
Let’s start with the good. Chaganty crucially recognizes the potential issue of having a trio of non-disabled filmmakers—Chaganty, Ohanian, and Qasabian—tell a disabled story. In his interview with Mediaversity’s Technicolor Theatre podcast, Chaganty admits, “I was very concerned. Like, is this going to feel like an exploitation by Aneesh?” Given this clear-eyed approach, I appreciate that the filmmakers aren’t coming at this with a savior complex and clearly did their best. At its most basic, they were intent on hiring an actor who uses a wheelchair for the role of Chloe—and followed through. (Sigh, Hollywood has set the bar so low.) Beyond casting Allen, who has used a wheelchair for six years, Chaganty encouraged her to make changes that she felt would make Chloe’s day-to-day feel authentic.
Chaganty goes on to describe that partnership in depth. “We went through every line of the script, so detailed and we talked about her backstories for hours and hours.” These discussions translated into integral changes on set: “When she told me about how inaccessible the whole room was, I was like, ‘Oh shit,’ you know? Like, you gotta change everything.”
The commitment by able-bodied filmmakers to check their own oversights, even when it could create delays or increase production costs, remains unfortunately rare in the industry. But it needs to become the standard moving forward, because such authenticity pays off in spades. Run is all the better for it.
That’s not to say Chaganty and Ohanian put the onus on Allen to do the work. In an interview with The New York Times, Allen noted that the two writers did their research on disability, recalling that “the script was already written so beautifully in this way—as soon as I read it, I emailed the director and was like: This is one of the best representations of a disabled character I’ve ever seen. And regardless of if I’m right for the role or not, I cannot wait for people to see this.”
Watching the movie, it’s clear why the protagonist makes Allen feel seen. The story never victimizes Chloe. She serves as the hero by uncovering her mother’s wicked intentions with her intelligence and by using her physical prowess to escape danger. Throughout the whole ordeal, it’s never Chloe’s disabilities that hold her back—it’s her mother’s weaponization of inaccessibility. For example, Diane traps her daughter on the second floor of the house by disengaging the wheelchair lift. In such moments, Run illustrates a larger point about the pervasive lack of accessibility in society: When we don’t make spaces accommodating for everybody, we trap disabled people in often terrifying situations.
Unfortunately, as much as the filmmakers empower Chloe as a wheelchair user, they still misrepresent MBP for the sake of drama. As many outlets have noted, Diane’s disorder is having a “moment” seen in recent works like Sharp Objects or Big Little Lies. Most Hollywood takes—Run included—focus solely on extreme expressions of MBP, thereby creating a stereotype through ongoing reinforcement. Whether it’s assuming all individuals with Tourette Syndrome blurt obscenities or overwhelmingly portraying folks with mental health issues as dangerous, Run also adds to growing stereotypes about MBP, with cumulatively harmful results. As real-world MBP survivor Ren discusses in her video, Run simply lets down victims of abuse who really didn’t need to see Chloe perpetuate such terrible cycles, as seen through the twist ending that has her becoming exactly the villain her mother was.
As with so many fights for better representation, the journey is fought on multiple fronts and won in fits and starts. Ultimately, Run does some exciting things for disability representation. But its tropey take on MBP and a twist ending that left some members of the community feeling cold makes this a half-win in the big picture.
Mediaversity Grade: A- 4.42/5
Chaganty broke ground with Searching, the first mainstream Hollywood thriller to star an Asian American actor. So it’s not the least bit shocking that he smashes barriers for wheelchair users with his follow-up. Run undeniably solidifies Chaganty as a genre innovator with a knack for meaningful representation.
12/21/20: Updated Disability category
Like Run? Try these other titles directed by Aneesh Chaganty or starring Sarah Paulson.
Interview w/ Aneesh Chaganty on Technicolor Theatre podcast
Searching (2018)
Ocean’s 8 (2018)