Netflix’s latest horror movie, Run Rabbit Run, an acquisition out of Sundance, has all the hallmarks of the genre fare seen in recent years. A grieving mother, a young (and unsettling) child, and generational trauma. There’s a discomfiting score punctuated by warbling strings that crawl under your skin. The atmosphere is moody. The normally sun-drenched Australian countryside is shrouded in clouds and dipped in grays and browns. Unfortunately, Run Rabbit Run is less than the sum of its parts, and even an excellent turn from Sarah Snook can’t elevate the movie beyond its basest instincts.

Snook’s Sarah is a loving mother; in the opening moments of Run Rabbit Run, she dotes over Mia (Lily LaTorre), stopping just shy of helicopter parent. Mia, on the other hand, leans into the creepy child trope immediately, asking if a person named Joan will be attending her birthday party. When Sarah asks why she misses Joan, a person Mia has never met, the child says, “I miss people I’ve never met all the time,” as unsettling strings play over the title card. Run Rabbit Run is never subtle in its intentions, but it does a good job of setting the scene for what’s to come. The Australian town where Sarah and Mia live is plagued by storms early on in the film, muted blues and grays casting gloomy shadows over Snook’s concerned face as Mia’s behavior becomes increasingly strange (including one very creepy rabbit mask made out of construction paper).

Lily LaTorre in Run Rabbit Run. 

Anyone familiar with Snook’s recent work in Succession (for which she should most certainly win an Emmy) won’t be surprised by her turn in Run Rabbit Run. Joan, the mysterious figure Mia keeps mentioning, turns out to be Sarah’s estranged mother who was put in a home by Sarah’s father before he died. A disastrous visit to Sarah’s mom plants an insidious seed in Mia’s head, one that may be manifesting in ways not grounded in the natural world as they stay at Sarah’s childhood home. Much of the fear here comes from the way director Daina Reed lenses the house, letting the shots linger over shadowy corners, yellowed walls, and the vast Australian landscape that surrounds the dilapidated home.

After its set-up, Run Rabbit Run ticks all the boxes — creepy drawings, footsteps padding through a cavernous home, even creepier animals, misinterpretations of what Mia is going through, and the implication that grief over her father’s death and her long-missing sister is causing Sarah to spiral. In this so-called era of elevated horror (a phrase that is quickly losing any meaning), Run Rabbit Run is, unfortunately, nothing new, a retread of genre elements that make it feel all-too-familiar. Its scare factor is certainly diluted by this familiarity, even as Lily LaTorre’s increasingly unhinged performance as Mia takes on the moniker of Alice, Sarah’s presumably deceased sister.

Sarah Snook and Lily LaTorre in Run Rabbit Run. 

As the movie nears its conclusion, though, Mia’s antics become more grating than unsettling, something that is key to the film’s central mystery. Is Sarah descending into madness or is something much more sinister at play? A third act twist reveals that it may be both and Snook delivers the revelation with the necessary terror and delusion needed to sell it, but the disparate strands of Run Rabbit Run never coalesce into something that feels like a cohesive whole. An indecipherable ending leaves too much room for interpretation and little in the way of actual depth when it comes to things the film wants to explore like grief, motherhood, and lingering trauma. Recent trends in horror may have resulted in some of the best films the genre has seen in years, but they also lead to films like this: A hollow exercise that mistakes plot for depth.

Run Rabbit Run is now streaming on Netflix. The film is 100 minutes long and is rated TV-MA.