Sarah Paulson’s career has been growing in leaps and bounds throughout the last several years and it’s only continuing to climb as she’s been a mainstay when it comes American Horror Story, at least until the previous season, 1984. But as one could guess she’s not even close to slowing down as she’s become one of the most intense actresses around, a statement that Jordan Crucchiola of Vulture might readily agree with. It’s not hard to see why she’s viewed in such a light either as the next thriller she’s set to appear in, Run, is already looking as though it might be one of the most disturbing movies of the year. The trailer starts out showing Paulson as a caring but very troubled mother that has to care for her daughter, Chloe, played by Kiera Allen, who is confined to a wheelchair and requires a great deal of care. Things devolve pretty quickly however when it’s noted that Chloe’s mother has a few dark secrets that she obviously keeps from her daughter. As things continue to get even stranger it becomes evident that there’s a strange love/hate dynamic going on with Paulson’s character as she’s likely keeping Chloe as dependent on her as she can while at the same time resenting her lot in life just a bit, a strange cycle of self-imposed suffering that appears bound to become increasingly dangerous throughout the movie.
This movie might make a lot of people appreciate their mother a lot more since it’s set to release two days prior to Mother’s Day, meaning that one can only bet that a lot of people will go to see the movie with their mother in tow, or be towed along by their mother as a way of saying ‘See how luck you are??” in a joking manner. It might not be in good taste to make a joke about mothers that have gone around the bend in human history, but it’s definitely a way to appreciate the mothers we do have that have been nothing less than dedicated to their children and to others around them throughout the years. It would be great if stories such as this were pure fantasy and had no way of being real, but the truth of it is that humanity is a massive soup of people that is difficult if not impossible to fully separate, and trying to pick out just who’s not right in the head and who meshes with society and the core values that so many follow isn’t that easy. Those that exhibit the kind of behaviors that Paulson’s character exhibit are thankfully not the norm, but unfortunately they’re not as rare as one might think.
Heck, some might even think running a movie such as this so close to Mother’s Day might be a bad idea, but the truth is that as I said it’s a way to feel thankful if you have a mom in your life or a mother figure that happens to care about you and isn’t out to get you somehow. Of course at this point we don’t know the whole story, but Paulson isn’t the only mother in movie history to intentionally harm their child under the auspices of ‘caring’ for them. After all there was the mother in The Sixth Sense that was keeping her daughter sick for her own reasons, and was only found out by the young boy, Cole, due to his ability to communicate with the dead. Then there’s Matilda for the sillier side of things, as she was left on her own to fend for herself as her parents just didn’t give a damn. Heck, Dead Poets Society, Mama, Home Alone, Carrie, I, Tonya, and even The Shining feature parents that are out to get their kids and yet claim that their behavior is for the kids’ own good as Nolan Moore of Looper might agree. Okay, maybe Home Alone wasn’t all that bad and Dead Poets Society was more authoritarian than harmful, but the rest of them were certainly less than supportive of their children as they needed to be.
She’s not the first obviously, but Paulson might turn out to be one of the creepiest since her emotional range can go from calm, quiet, and warm to chill, distant, and emotionally wrecked in a short amount of time. Her time in AHS has shown this much and it’s been her calling card for a while now. Any project that gets her to express a full range of emotion is typically one that allows Sarah to show what she’s really worth, and thus far those have usually been among the best projects for her to gravitate towards. So tell your mom you appreciate her before you see this one and don’t forget to do so after since one thing is always certain, as bad as you might think your parents can get, there are always those who can be worse.
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