'Run Sweetheart Run' Review

 
R: Horror violence, bloody images, language, sexual references, and brief nudityRuntime: 1 Hour and 37 MinutesProduction Companies: Automatik Entertainment, Blumhouse Productions, Quiet Girl ProductionsDistributor: OTL Releasing, Blumhouse Tilt Director: Shana FesteWriters: Shana FesteCast: Ella Balinska, Pilou Asbæk, Clark Gregg, Aml Ameen, Dayo Okeniyi, Betsy Brandt, Shohreh AghdashlooRelease Date: May 8, 2020
Timid and hardworking single mother Cherie (Ella Balinska, Charlie’s Angels) brushes away hesitations and decides to dip her toe back into the dating scene after being spurred on by her coworkers. She’s thrilled when her boss sets her up on a blind date with Ethan (Pilou Asbæk, Game of Thrones), who initially proves every bit as charming and magnetic as his photo. Ethan can’t hide his true nature for very long though, and when things quickly turn sinister, Cherie must find a way to escape. Forced to navigate the streets of LA after hours on foot, Cherie learns Ethan is far more connected and violent than she ever imagined.
Run Sweetheart Run is Shana Feste’s first horror feature and it’s definitely her best work yet by a longshot. After many years of penning and helming mediocre melodramas, this is far from her usual fare and her execution is effective, especially from a directorial standpoint. For a Blumhouse project (‘cause we know how low the budgets for those films are), this has a variety of styles throughout, for it misleads you with its aesthetic. When the story begins, Cherie and Ethan hit it off on a first date, convincingly passing off as a cute rom-com with seductive lighting and colorful locations. Once Cherie enters Ethan’s lavish house and runs out bloody and bruised a few seconds later, Feste pulls the wool off the audience’s eyes, surprising them with a dark horror/thriller.
There are some distinct running motifs featured in creative manners that I admired. Every time Ethan attacks Cherie, he turns to the camera, breaks the fourth wall, and moves it away so you don’t see the violence on screen. At first, I thought it was a humorous dark joke and I was going to make a comment about the Blumhouse budget preventing you from seeing the kind of terror Ethan is capable of, but as it progresses you realize it’s an allegory for men who assault women in private and do it with the comfort of being completely exonerated. One of the best aspects of Charlie’s Angels was seeing newcomer Ella Balinska show off her acting skills and her performance was impressive despite it being hampered by a mediocre script. Here, she’s in the limelight carrying an entire feature and she delivers a good performance which required a lot of physical work. Watching Balinska go from being a total badass to portraying someone who is vulnerable, having all the attributes of a scream queen and coming to her own power in one performance, is a testament to her talent. She has a great range as an actress and this film will hopefully help her land more projects. Plus, she has a good American accent. Pilou Asbæk always shines when he’s playing a fucking asshole. Whether it be in Game of Thrones as Euron Greyjoy or his role in Run Sweetheart Run, he is just so devilishly fun to watch. As the monstrous Ethan, Asbæk displays this calm and seductive well-mannered persona despite being a literal friggin’ monster. Every time he’s on-screen he exudes such terrifying menace while chewing up the scenery with charisma. The plot is very much a survival game of cat-and-mouse and most of it is an entertaining romp for genre fans. Feste wears her inspiration on her sleeve, for many of the beats are reminiscent of classics such as Halloween and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. 
I appreciate how Feste commits to telling this narrative through the female perspective. Its setup stems from the worst first date ever — an element most women can relate to — but as it progresses, the story deviates from that. Aforementioned, the majority of the story is a cat-and-mouse game with its own creativity and Feste incorporates spiritual mythology to Ethan, teasing him to be a supernatural being more so than a man. Believe me, because of the genre and the terror and the murders, I bought into it. It didn’t feel forced because you had evidence. Now, the finale is where the movie tries a bit too hard to do too much. I admire its ambitions to incorporate a #MeToo message and relate it to Ethan, but several oversights actually diminish the message. Ethan’s an asshole, but so is Cherie’s ex-boyfriend (who I would argue is a bigger piece of shit than the antagonist pursuing her), her boss (played by Clark Gregg) who sets up her date with Ethan in the first place, and there’s even a scene involving him and his wife (Betsy Brandt) that goes unresolved. The message gets so muddled for so long that when it comes back big and strong by the third act, it feels forced. It hurts to say that the intention of adding a #MeToo message made this supernatural horror’s narrative incohesive. Nonetheless, Run Sweetheart Run is a fun and well-paced horror that makes for good fun despite its ambitions being far beyond reach.  Rating: 3.5/5 | 70%