Fans Of The Act Will Love Hulu's Run

Fans of psychological horror films like Misery (1990) and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane (1962) might find some familiar thrills in Run, which is out on Hulu now. Like the films that came before it, Run examines what happens when one person's care for another becomes a much more toxic, frightening expression of love. Some of the greatest, most memorable moments in films like these come not from adrenaline-spiking scares, but rather tension that's drawn out over what over the duration of the movie. And you don't have to look any further than to its genre predecessors to get a sense of just how scary Run is.

Center to Run are Diane (Sarah Paulson) and Chloe (Kiera Allen). Chloe is a young woman who, due to her numerous health complications, is homeschooled by her mother. While at first the two appear to be the picture of domestic bliss, things take a turn when Chloe learns that her mother might actually be struggling with Munchausen syndrome by proxy. The film follows Chloe as she unravels this mystery while her mother exacts a very specific, very chilling kind of terror on her child.

Run is scary much in the same way that The Act, Sharp Objects, and 2018's Searching (which Run director Aneesh Chaganty also directed) are scary. There's loads of nail-biting tension and close calls, but far less jump scares and out-and-out frights. (IGN's review of Run even explicitly points out that the film doesn't have a jump scare to speak of.)

The film resides solely in the realm of psychological horror, where the horrific things shown on screen aren't so much ghosts or demons, but rather the many horrifying things humans are capable of. Moreover, the horror at the heart of Run is more about how much worse those horrifying things can be when they're inflicted upon us by the very people who are supposed to care for us.