Delving into the unsettling ending of Netflix's Run Rabbit Run (2024)

Run Rabbit Run is one of those Netflix thrillers that leaves you guessing until the very end.

Starring Succession star Sarah Snook, the movie was one of the streamer's most talked-about movies in 2023, although unfortunately not as good as the best movies on Netflix. Still, what Run Rabbit Run did amazingly well was playing with viewers' expectations, leading up to an ambiguous ending that leaves some major questions unanswered.

It's up to the viewer to work out what it all means, so we are here to help.

Was everything in Sarah's head or did everything actually happen? Was her daughter Mia really possessed by Sarah's long-long sister Alice, who went missing when she was 7 years old? How does a rabbit fit into it?

We can't promise to deliver all of the answers, although we can answer enough to give you the best explanation.

In order to do so, we need to delve into Run Rabbit Run's unsettling ending, so major spoilers await.

When they get to Sarah's childhood home, Mia continues to act strangely, insisting that she sleep in Alice's room as "it's my room". When Sarah tells Mia about Alice, Mia responds: "I'm back, I'm your sister."

According to Sarah, she fought a lot with her sister, who liked animals and would bring back strays to look after them. Mia's strange behaviour started when a mysterious rabbit appeared at their house which Mia insisted she keep, suggesting that maybe she has a bit of Alice in her.

Sarah says that Alice liked to play hide-and-seek which leads to a dramatic change in Mia as she responds: "I don't like hide-and-seek, you don't look for me. You don't like me. You make me hide and hide and hide. You make me hide all day. You don't want to find me. You lock me in. I hate you."

Late one night, as she did earlier in the movie, Sarah sees Mia's head bleeding and attempts to cut back her hair to see where the injury is. Mia fights back and it leads to Sarah unwittingly cutting Mia's arms, and when she looks back at Mia's head, the bleeding isn't there.

Sarah continues to imagine things and when she's in the barn behind the house, she hears a banging coming from behind a locked door. Alice jumps out and starts attacking Sarah, before Sarah hits Alice in the head with an old rabbit trap, and Alice disappears.

Mia is watching this all unfold and runs back into the house, Sarah chasing after her. Sarah knocks herself out attempting to get into Alice's room, and in flashback, we see what really happened to Alice.

Sarah did hit Alice in the head with the rabbit trap, leading to the bleeding we saw Sarah imagining on Mia's head. Sarah then chased her sister down and pushed her off the cliff to her death.

When Sarah wakes up in the morning, Mia is missing and her ex-husband Pete (Damon Herriman) has arrived in a panic. They search for Mia and it's suggested that maybe Sarah did to Mia what she did to Alice, especially when she sees a body floating in the lake.

However, it's all in Sarah's head and Mia is found safely under a nearby bush. Later that night, Sarah is holding Mia in bed and talks to her as though she's Alice, telling her that she told their mother that she ran away. Alice calls her a monster and Sarah agrees: "I'm a monster."

Once Sarah is asleep, Mia sees the rabbit in the doorway and follows it. The following morning, Sarah wakes up and when she sees Mia is missing, she walks out of the room, but not before stopping and looking at what seems to be Pete on the spare bed.

Pete has a pillow over his head and unless he just has an unusual way of sleeping (maybe he was trying to block out Sarah's imaginary conversation with Alice), it's possible that Sarah has killed Pete.

She doesn't seem too fussed either way and checks Alice's room to see it empty too. When she looks out of the window, Sarah sees Alice and Mia walking hand-in-hand to the same cliff that Sarah pushed Alice off.

Sarah frantically pounds on the window to get Mia to come back, and the movie cuts to black, leaving Mia's fate ambiguous.

It's left up to the viewer to decide what was actually real and what was just a manifestation of Sarah's unresolved guilt and grief over what she did to her sister, including whether or not Mia really was being led to her death by Alice.

You could read it that the mysterious rabbit was Alice resurrected in bunny form, and the final moments are Alice punishing Sarah for what she did to her. As well as being the bunny, Alice's spirit also took over Mia every time she spoke of being Alice.

Equally, this could have all been in Sarah's head. Earlier in the movie, Mia spoke about how her grandfather said he'd come back as a pelican to "keep an eye" on Sarah. Combined with Sarah's guilt, she could have manifested the idea that Alice had come back to haunt her for what she did.

In this instance, it's possible the entire final sequence is in Sarah's head after she confesses everything to 'Alice'. It doesn't quite explain how Mia sees the rabbit and follows it when Sarah is asleep, but maybe Sarah just has a vivid imagination and her nightmare is very detailed.

Taking it a bit further, if you assume that Sarah has killed Pete too, maybe even them seeing Mia under the bush didn't really happen. Maybe Sarah really did kill Mia the same way she killed Alice, but Pete assumed it was some horrible accident, only for Sarah to kill him during the night.

Ultimately it probably comes down to you how you want to view it. The most positive interpretation of the ending is that it's all in Sarah's head, meaning that Mia and Pete are all fine.

Of course, if you'd rather think Mia and Pete are dead, it's up to you whether you think Sarah did it as a result of her mental breakdown, or whether it's not her fault and down to the resurrected spirit of Alice out to punish Sarah.

Either way, grim.

Run Rabbit Run is available to watch now on Netflix.