There are seeds at the core of the horror-thriller Run! That, with a few tweaks and a couple of casting changes, would make for a very good movie.
As it stands, the tight 86-minute run time and two solid lead actors (Alena von Stroheim and Jeremy Miller) make it a curiosity that invites you to watch all the way through, even though the final act’s payoff is a few dollars short.
Miller and von Stroheim play a married couple who, for reasons not very clear, are renewing their wedding vows, officiated by the world’s creepiest officiant (a way over-the-top Kevin Muster) in a dusty, middle-of nowhere desert town.
Afterwards. his wife is kidnapped from a van on its way to a hotel that probably doesn’t exist, Miller, known only as The Runner, starts trying to find her while simultaneously dodging a sharpshooter’s bullets.
The boiling hot scenery is good to look at and two of the three villains (four, if you include an ever-present drone hovering over the desert hide and seek and dodge and shoot) do their mostly non-verbal jobs well enough to give us the occasional chill.
The directors/writers Bill Brennenstuhl and Paul Stenerson jog back and forth in time and introduce characters with black title cards under white titles (The Runner, The Shooter, etc.) to only limited effect.
Although I couldn’t recommend it if it were a theater release, it’s a harmless enough diversion on digital and VOD, which is where you can watch it right now. From Blue Fox Entertainment / Red Hound Entertainment
