Mother makes home a hell in tense thriller
Chloe Sherman has been sheltering in place her entire life. The 17yearold high school senior was born paralyzed from the waist down and has several other medical conditions, including asthma and arrhythmia. Her entire education has come courtesy of homeschooling, administered by her loving single mom, Diane.
But what if Mom isn’t the sweet angel she appears to be? What if Chloe’s battery of prescription pills isn’t managing her conditions, but making them worse?
“Run” is a tense, nailbiting thriller featuring powerhouse performances by the everreliable Sarah Paulson as the mother from hell (call her Mommie Fearest?) and newcomer Kiera Allen as Chloe,
whose dreams of going to college are derailed by another goal: getting out of the house.
The film was directed by Aneesh Chaganty, who grew up in San Jose, and written by Chaganty and Sev Ohanian, the team behind “Searching,” one of 2018’s best films.
In that film, John Cho essentially confines himself to his house, a single parent using the tools of the internet to help track his missing teenage daughter. So clearly, Chaganty and Ohanian love ratcheting up the suspense within confined spaces, and they’re really good at it.
“Run,” clocking in at an efficient, nononsense 90 minutes, quickly establishes the relationship between mother and daughter, or at least how it’s been for the past 17 years. Chloe is smart and remarkably welladjusted emotionally despite her physical limitations and the fact that her home is her world. In that sense, Diane has done a great job of raising her.
Sure, Chloe’s got a touch of cabin fever and she looks forward to the mail delivery each day to see if she has been accepted into college. If so, she is set to leave home for the first time.
The first clue that something is wrong is when Chloe discovers she is taking medication not prescribed to her. Because her mother doesn’t allow her to have a cell phone (as they are homebound anyway) and regulates internet usage, Chloe has a hard time finding out what the pill actually is. When she does, it’s a red flag that her mother is not who she seems.
To reveal more would be to spoil a good time, but suffice to say that soon she is in a oneonone battle with an increasingly monstrous mother.
Paulson is pitchperfect; where many would have the temptation to go over the top, she opts instead for subtlety. Her Diane has her reasons, and Paulson makes them believable.
But it is Allen, who uses a wheelchair in real life, who owns the picture. She is the first wheelchair user to star in a major thriller since Susan Peters in 1948’s “The Sign of the Ram.”
Her Chloe projects fear and vulnerability, but she is smart and resourceful and treats limitations as a challenge to be overcome. As Diane comes to regret, she might have taught her daughter too well.