[Editorial] Disability and Horror: Run (2021)

Sarah Paulson and Kiera Allen star in Run, a title that dropped online at the end of 2020 and never saw as much press as expected given the rather serious marketing campaign that aimed right for the pockets of those seeking strong disability representation. While the film gets many aspects of disability representation right, and even successfully pushes boundaries to great effect, the overall narrative is damaging. The big reveal feeds into prevailing able-ist attitudes, and therefore was rejected by most within the disability community. Whether that rejection was merited or not is for someone else to decide, but I intend to discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly aspects of representation in this story of a somewhat-too-close mother and daughter. Be forewarned, mateys, there be spoilers ahead in these monstrous waters.

Run opens in a fairly unusual way for a star-vehicle thriller, starting with a list of definitions of serious medical conditions that might be unfamiliar to the average viewer. Not only does this set up the theme of overwhelming chronic illness, but it educates the viewer at the same time about the parameters within which the main character, Chloe, lives. Her mother seems cool and collected and put together when she talks a good game about her daughter’s ability to live on her own at the (improbably mandatory) Home School Association meeting. Is she concerned about her daughter as she graduates and moves on to college? She is paralyzed after all. Sarah Paulson as the mother seems to be defending her daughter’s autonomy and ability to make good choices, hitting all the notes of disability advocacy a little too squarely on the head for someone facing imminent empty nest syndrome. As we all know, appearances can be deceiving and her performative talk is indeed too good to be true. 

As Chloe patiently waits for news of her college acceptance, she begins to notice certain irregularities with her prescriptions, and snoops around to find out what drugs she is really taking and why. The suspense built up around her sleuthing almost uniformly centers on what she as a character is unable to do because of her disability. Rather than emphasizing the character’s intelligence or adaptation to circumstance, the script squeezes most of its suspense out of the question, “but CAN she?” As an approach to filmmaking, it does work. The audience does receive its requisite adrenaline rush, but it equally feeds into assumptions and biases that say that physical capability is the most important factor and the inability to walk or to reach or to move is the limiting factor in any individual story. 

While the physical limitation trope throughout the suspenseful sequences did irk me a fair bit, credit must be given to the filmmakers for creating believable stunts, performed with aplomb by the star, Kiera Allen. In casting, they deliberately chose a wheelchair user who was able to perform her own stunts, within the confines of her disabilities. As a result, this film is that rare thriller that includes accurate representation of the range of motion and ability on the part of a character with limited mobility. This choice was inspired, and allows much of the action to feel grounded and real.

At about the same time though, the narrative shifts gears and becomes a story of a mother’s pathological need to be needed. As Chloe discovers more about her medical records and the mountains of pills she takes each day, she discovers the truth that her mother has been deliberately poisoning her, presenting her to the world as a chronically ill paraplegic, and taking her to doctors all over the place to treat her non-existent problems. The name for this psychological condition is Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. According to the DSM-IV, the primary motivation for both Munchausen Syndrome and Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy is a desire to feign or induce illness to seek attention and sympathy from others. As construed in this world, the mother’s primary motivation is her need for her child to be dependent, rather than any need for validation or expressions of pity from others. 

Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy has been making a bit of a comeback of late in various film and TV programs, not least of which is the Hulu documentary series The Act about the real-life case of Gypsy Rose Blanchard who was poisoned by her mother and kept in a state of dependence until she and her boyfriend attempted to kill her mother/captor. While this disease is real, as are the consequences of it, the prevalence of this narrative trope has had harmful effects on the lives of the chronically ill. If you ask any person with a rare disease to name the number of doctors they have seen who didn’t believe them when they described their symptoms, the responses are typically in the double digits. The American medical system as it exists today marginalizes a great number of people, but few more so than the chronically ill. 

Dubbed “frequent flyers” and described as attention or drug-seeking, patients who present with extreme symptoms of pain and paralysis or whose cases represent something outside the norm are frequently treated with distrust and suspicion rather than compassion and careful attention to detail. This culture of distrust, due to overwhelmingly popular narratives about Muchausen’s leads many doctors to stall treatment and dismiss pain as a psycho-somatic effect. As a result, the average length of time women have to wait for a diagnosis of pain from “rarer” diseases, or those that affect women only, like endometriosis and other conditions is seven to eight years, according to a 2013 study conducted by Brazilian researchers. 

In my own life, I can’t tell you how many doctors have assumed that I had Munchausen’s or Munchausen’s by Proxy when they saw that I had been diagnosed with not one but three rare diseases, but I do know of one doctor who felt emboldened enough to tell me that I or someone around me clearly wanted attention and we “weren’t going to get it from him.” 

In the world of Run, Munchausen’s by Proxy is depicted with the same broad strokes as other shows and films that don’t mention the real psychological root of the problem, or the easier ways of recognizing it when it happens. While I object to the prevalence of this storyline, Run is hardly unique in that respect. However, when the third act arrives on schedule to throw things off the rails, rather than allowing a disabled character to escape her captor in an authentic way, Chloe magically regains mobility, particularly after reading an inspirational sign that reads “Be Boundless.” 

Here lies the real rub. A story revolving exclusively around a character with disabilities fighting with their own disabilities throughout the runtime of the film reveals a significant amount of ableist thinking on its own. This problem is compounded when, rather than giving that character the tools to intellectually overcome problems in the material world, the writers give them the sudden ability to walk out of the situation by sheer force of will. Even in a narrative where the character’s condition has been artificially induced by household toxins, the message to every disabled viewer veers dangerously into the territory of “mind over matter.” If anything can be overcome if you will it so, your disability is a result of a lack of something inside you. Your disability is your fault. 

I’d like to think the filmmakers didn’t know exactly how these beats would be taken by an audience with disabilities, but even so, someone should have presented this script to a sensitivity reader at some point in time. Any good will that the movie won through its appropriate casting and realistic stunts immediately disappears in the face of a storyline riddled with booby traps for the audience it was marketed to. Sarah Paulson and Kiera Allen both do extraordinary work here, displaying both physical and psychological effects of their respective diseases, far beyond what the script is actually asking them to do. Both of these fine actors deserve better material that accurately represents the strengths of the disability community, and showcases their talents in a script with a more integrative view of the world.

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