Run Rabbit Run Ending Explained- Is Alice Real, The White Rabbit, And What Happens To Mia?

Sundance darling Run Rabbit Run is a psychological thriller from the same ilk as The Uninvited, only decidedly creepier and less concerned with tricks. Seven-year-old Mia lives with her mother, Sarah(Sarah Snook of Succession). They are both struggling with the loss of Sarah’s father, Mia’s grandfather, not long ago. One day Mia begins saying strange things about missing people she has never met and saying she is not Mia. When Sarah takes her to see her estranged mother, recently diagnosed with dementia, things get even worse. Sarah’s mother calls her Alice and says she has come back to her.

The more Mia insists she is Alice, the more Sarah loses her grip on reality. It all ends in a shocking and ambiguous ending that couldn’t be more bleak. Here’s everything you need to know about the ending of Run Rabbit Run.

Throughout the film, we see flashbacks and hints about a tragedy that happened to Sarah as a child. Sarah’s sister Alice went missing at seven years old and was never found. Sarah’s mother never got over the loss of her youngest daughter. Years later, Sarah has a daughter of her own that she dotes on and vehemently protects. At first, we think she is sensitive to bullying because her sister bullied her when they were little.

In the final act, we learn, however, that Sarah was the aggressor and relentlessly bullied her sister until the day that she locked her in a locker in the shed. When Mia escaped, the two girls fought, and Mia ran towards the cliffs near their house. Sarah caught up to her and pushed her over the cliff, and she died. Her guilt drove her away from her mother and caused her to be violent and potentially delusional.

Every encounter Sarah has where she sees Mia as Alice echos a memory of the terrible day Sarah killed her sister. The gash on Mia’s head that isn’t really there and the bleeding nose aren’t real. At least it is presented that way until the final twist completely shapes the narrative, and the viewer is left wondering if Alice had the upper hand all along. Here are two possibilities about what the ending meant.

Alice is haunting Sarah and has returned for her pound of flesh

If you believe in karma, you likely believe that Alice does, in fact, exist, at least in ghost form, and she is getting revenge. This is why Joan thinks Mia is Alice because Alice is possessing Mia at that point to torment Sarah. It is the only way she can see her mother again, and for Alice possessing Mia kills two birds with one stone. If Alice exists, everything that happens is orchestrated to drive Sarah mad and take Mia away. This bleak ending means Mia will soon die, and Sarah will be forever caught in a loop of regret and grief.

Alice wants Sarah to admit what she did and potentially wants Sarah to suffer. If Sarah had admitted what happened in the past or the present, it might have prevented Alice from returning and taking Mia. The assumption is Alice is taking Mia to the cliff where she will fall and die.

Sarah hallucinated everything because of her grief, and very little of what we saw actually happened. It is possible most of her interactions with Mia acting as Alice, happened. She could have imagined nearly all of them as she was constantly alone with the child. The disastrous visit with Joan could have been real as the girls were the same age and looked similar, and Joan, who was struggling to keep everything straight, could have confused Mia for Alice. If Mia was reaching out for a connection after losing her grandfather and saw Joan’s embrace and confusion as a sign of love, she might have been willing to play along short term. This would have exacerbated Sarah’s delusions and contributed to her spiral into insanity.

With this theory, Sarah’s delusions could explain everything from the moving pictures to most of Mia’s behavior. Mia seems unaware of nose bleeds, and when she looks at her hand after wiping her nose, there is no blood indicating there never was any. Additionally, Mia’s teacher worried about Mia’s drawings, but we never see them, and she never says she calls herself Alice. Sarah extrapolated those things to fit her narrative. A scene near the end of Sarah drawing the same images she accused Mia of drawing in her library book solidifies the theory.

Guilt has destroyed her grasp on reality. Potentially everything that happened could have been prevented if Sarah had admitted what she did. Instead, Sarah lied to her parents and said Alice ran away. The delusions would have stopped if she had admitted things back then or later when she visited Joan in the nursing home.

Why did Sarah slam the car door on her own hand in Run Rabbit Run?

Early in the film, during a scuffle getting Mia strapped into her car seat, Sarah accidentally shuts the car door on Mia’s hand. It is an accident, but her reaction is bizarre. Instead of taking the child to the doctor, she briefly apologizes and, minutes later, shuts her own hand in the door. She doesn’t scream in pain as the door slams, either. This is another clue that everything happening to Sarah is because of her guilt. She shuts the door on her hand to atone for hurting Mia.

What’s with the white rabbit?

The rabbit is a manifestation of Sarah’s guilt. On the day Alice died, when she was finally let out of the locker, she tried to strangle Sarah, and Sarah retaliated by hitting her in the head with a rabbit trap. This is why the white rabbit Mia finds is so disturbing to her and what potentially starts all of Sarah’s delusions to bubble up. At the end of Run Rabbit Run, Mia follows her white rabbit out of the house, and Sarah sees Mia and Alice heading for the cliff hand in hand. Whether this sequence is real depends on your opinion of Sarah’s mental state.

Several times mental health is mentioned. Sarah’s mother is in a care facility for her mental state. Mia’s teacher suggests Sarah and Mia go to therapy to deal with their loss, and the trauma caused by Alice’s death all point towards Sarah having a psychotic break. For Sarah, the white rabbit represents Alice which is why she is uneasy about it and why it is significant that the rabbit bit her.

Whether you believe, Alice is a ghost getting even or Sarah hallucinating, the biggest takeaway from Run Rabbit Run is guilt will tear you apart. Unless you are a sociopath, the truth will find a way of coming out, even if it has to go through you to do it. We don’t know much about Sarah’s childhood beyond what we see in Sarah’s flashbacks. It is implied she is cruel to her sister, but Alice could be cruel as well. Alice’s death was a horrible accident that didn’t need to define the entire family for the rest of their life. It ruined everything they touched and presumably will get Mia killed.