The Last House on the Left (2009 film)

• Horror films once managed to seamlessly integrate cultural commentary into their visceral effect.
• Run Rabbit Run, following a mother and daughter as the past comes back to haunt them, is the latest Australian film to jump on the bandwagon of the new wave of horror.
• The psychological terrain of the guilty mother is typical narrative fare, but, unlike Jennifer Kent’s brilliant The Babadook (2014), Run Rabbit Run doesn’t take any of this in surprising or invigorating directions.

No escape

• Fertility doctor Sarah (Sarah Snook) and her young daughter Mia (Lily LaTorre) live alone.
• The more the daughter reaches out to her mum in the hope of understanding her family, the more dysfunctional their relationship becomes.
• In trite fashion, the film’s closing moments show for Sarah, no matter how fast she runs, there’s no escaping her past.

Predictable cues and gothic cliches

• It follows some of the predictable visual cues of horror in the Instagram-era: muted, washed-out colours; a score favouring drone sounds; a plethora of slow-moving tracking shots and spooky silhouettes.
• The narrative is replete with gothic cliches.
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A visceral medium

• It seems to approach its – let’s face it, totally ludicrous – ghost story with the seriousness of a Bergman film.
• Film is a visceral medium; horror film more than most.
• The heavy-handed tone of Run Rabbit Run exhausts it of visceral impact.
• The “trauma” in Run Rabbit Run – while significant for the characters – doesn’t connect to any more meaningful cultural or historical moment.