Is Netflix’s ‘Run Rabbit Run’ Based on a True Story?

Sarah Snook, how we’ve missed you.

The Succession actress luckily did not wait too long to return to the screen after that shocking series finale aired in May. Now, the Australian breakout star is back in a brand new Netflix thriller.

In Run Rabbit Run, Snook plays a fertility doctor also named Sarah who begins noticing some strange behavior from her daughter who claims to remember things from her past life. The horror movie was written by mystery author Hannah Kent and directed by The Handmaid’s Tale director Daina Reid.

In John Serba’s Run Rabbit Run review for Decider, he praises Snook’s stellar performance, writing, “Snook is so good in Run Rabbit Run, it bums me out that she has to exist alongside a litany of tiresome and repetitive cliches.”

This creepy film may feel familiar to viewers who are already well-acquainted with the horror genre that is Creepy Kids Terrorizing Their Parents, but is there any truth to this movie? Here’s what we know:

Is Run Rabbit Run based on a true story?

The short answer is… kind of.

Run Rabbit Run is a familiar tale of possessed children and their creeped-out family members. But this original screenplay does draw some inspiration from the real world.

In an interview with Australia’s In Review, Kent revealed that she got the idea for the screenplay after watching a documentary about a boy who could describe his past life in detail, down to the home he says he grew up in.

“[His mother] just put it down to kids saying the strange things that they sometimes do,” Kent said. “However, as time progressed, his desire to go back to this house became even more acute. He was homesick, he missed his other family – and he was able to add a lot more detail about the place where he said he had been living.”

Kent, who is also the author behind the bestselling novel Burial Rites, began researching the idea for another book until she was approached to work on a screenplay.

“What was really interesting to me was what it would be like to be a parent of this child,” she said. “I was interested in the mother and the alienation she would feel when a child didn’t want her.”

According to the movie’s description, Sarah “believes firmly in life and death” and is forced to “challenge her own values and confront a ghost from her past” after her daughter begins exhibiting some odd behavior, which includes requesting her mother call her Alice, the name of Sarah’s sister who died at the age of seven.

You might think you know what happens next, but the film’s eerie ending is ambiguous enough it will leave you wondering if any of it was real at all.

Run Rabbit Run is now streaming on Netflix.