Mark Reviews Movies: RUN (2020)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 19, 2020

Co-writer/director Aneesh Chaganty's Run is a smart, clever thriller with some smart, clever characters. Really, it's all about being resourceful, both from a filmmaking perspective and through the actions of its main character, a teenage girl with assorted medical issues who is in a wheelchair.

A lesser movie—on multiple levels—would have treated Chloe (Kiera Allen), the protagonist, as weak and helpless and, ultimately, the victim of circumstances beyond her control, but Chaganty and co-screenwriter Sev Ohanian don't see her in that way—not once, not ever. Chloe has adapted to life—suffering from asthma and diabetes and partial paralysis, among other things—and, because of that, is just as capable to outwit, outmaneuver, and outplay anything or anyone who gets in her way.

That doesn't mean there aren't very specific challenges the character must overcome in her search to discover whether or not there is a force working against her. The filmmakers, though, ensure that every obstacle, every puzzle, and every encounter possesses a solution. Chloe might have to work a little or a lot harder to figure out those answers, but she does, because, vitally, she can.

A short prologue focuses on Chloe's mother Diane (Sarah Paulson), who gives birth to a premature baby. The doctors are hesitant to disclose what the child's prognosis is, but some on-screen text does the work for them, listing a series of ailments and conditions. That's when we meet the teenaged Chloe, who goes through her morning routine—most of it perfectly ordinary and some it relating to her various medical conditions.

Diane has homeschooled her daughter, and it has paid off. Chloe is looking forward to a college acceptance letter any day now, and from a brief scene at a local meeting for parents who homeschool, it seems as if Diane is conflicted but somewhat relieved to have some part of her life return when her daughter goes away to college.

The smart thing about the screenplay is that it doesn't waste time getting to the conflict. We get a sense of Chloe's daily life. We see how Diane hovers over her daughter, although now Chloe is more insistent on doing things on her own. Is that happiness or resentment on the mother's face when the daughter asserts her independence, even in a small way? Paulson's performance in these early scenes is an admirable enigma, suggesting much that we might find sympathetic or potentially nefarious without giving away the actual truth either way.

The mail keeps coming, but no college letter is arriving. Diane promises Chloe that the daughter will be the first to open any such letter, and honest Chloe, who tells her mother everything, has no reason to suspect that Diane is lying.

On a seemingly ordinary day, Diane returns from the grocery store with a new medication. Looking for forbidden chocolate, Chloe notices the pills and the prescription in her mother's name. What a shock it is, then, when one of those pills ends up in Chloe's nightly medicine regimen.

That gets Chloe thinking about her mother's motives, and much of the film is about a hunt for the truth. The obvious obstacles include the facts that Chloe is in a wheelchair, meaning that she can't just reach up for the pill bottle to figure out the medication's name, and that her asthma and diabetes can cause some serious problems in the midst of an investigation, such as when she sneaks away from a movie theater to the pharmacy to get a professional opinion on the pill in question.

Such physical limitations result in some cleverly devised and staged sequences of suspense, including one that has Chloe trying to break into her mother's room via the rooftop ledge between windows (The way she opens that window is particularly ingenious). There's internal logic to these scenes, not only in terms of how and why they happen, but also—and more importantly for the portrayal of the main character—in the way Chaganty and Ohanian constantly prove how capable Chloe is at every turn.

Those scenes, seeing how Chloe works around her limitations, stand out, because they are unique and treat Chloe as an ordinary hero in a thriller (In her first major role, Allen embodies intelligence and grit, while emphasizing Chloe's emotional vulnerability instead of any physical kind). Most of this story, though, is about a game of wits between the daughter, who doesn't want to upset Diane (either because Chloe is wrong in her suspicions or, the really frightening option, because she's correct), and the mother, who's definitely up to something desperate. Chaganty and Ohanian, not to mention Paulson, play with our sympathies so well in regards to this character that the ultimate revelation—as contrived as the method to expose it may be—is quite the shock (A similar thing can be said about the film's epilogue, which seems to be sympathetic—until a final, startling twist of the metaphorical knife).

This is a tight, occasionally inventive, and surprisingly empowering thriller. Run does exactly what it needs to do, escalating the tension and stakes of its story in precise increments, but through its protagonist, the film also accomplishes something that we don't often see. It treats a person with a disability, not as a victim or with a focus on weakness, but as someone who is just as capable and ordinary to be the hero in a tale like this one.

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