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Run Hide Fight was directed and written by Kyle Rankin and stars Isabel May, Eli Brown, Britton Sear, Cyrus Arnold, Catherine Davis, Radha Mitchell, Thomas Jane, and Treat Williams. It’s about a high school student who has to fight for her life and those of her classmates when a group of school shooters take over.

The Plot: For as little logic required as there is for a hostage movie plot set in a school (school shootings are rather senseless), Rankin has a hard time keeping reality in play, even though the story of the movie is thin as Die Hard knockoffs get.

Nearing the end of the school year, prom-posals and pranks are in session, but not for high school senior Zoe (May), who’s pushing everything to the side after the death of her mother Jennifer (Mitchell). That soon changes after a van driven by Tristan (Brown) silently(?) crashes through the cafeteria and unleashes the driver and his cohorts – brother and sister duo Chris (Sear) and Anna (Davis), and Kip (Arnold), who start shooting up the school. Naturally, Zoe takes stock of the situation, and that’s where Run Hide Fight surrenders to the tried and true template of the aforementioned classic.

Surface level differences are present, such as the evildoers wanting to make their crime public, but it’s obvious that the helmer just wants to redo what’s already been redone, down to forcing a buddy dynamic with Zoe and her deceased mother, who pops up during key moments to give her advice. This also means that the cops, lead by Sheriff Tarsy (Williams) and Zoe’s father Todd (Jane) surround the school and wait for the go ahead to act, all while Zoe is in there turning the situation around on her own. The shooters have an all too thought-out plan for their spree, which makes up the story going forward. However, without the depth or twists of something like Die Hard, this movie is just an exercise in formula filmmaking.

It’s a square peg/round hole situation here. While there’s an effort to put the viewer into the shoes of a student during a horrific event like this, Run Hide Fight tries too hard to ape classics instead of incorporating their best elements, making the ensuing story too familiar.

The Characters: As far as characters go, the emphasis is all over the place and the required depth to make any of the parties in the conflict memorable just isn’t there, despite committed performances from the cast (which also includes Barbara Crampton and Corin Nemec in small roles).

Zoe is a protagonist with all of the background one might expect out of a movie predominantly starring troubled teens. She’s not enticing to be around on account of her cynical demeanor, skills which are atypical for a teenage girl (hunting and skinning animals), and refusal to let anyone – including her father – get through to her after her mother’s death due to cancer. Zoe’s arc is a weird one, finding her somehow satisfied in her situation since she can help others, but she’s still generic as a whole.

None of the shooters register as real, driven people. There’s a hierarchy at which Tristan sits atop of, and some very basic “justification” with the reveal that they’ve all been bullied before, but they can be boiled down to edgy nihilists in various forms. Tristan is out to spread a message and deliver “a reckoning” about some malformed justice, Chris is a violent lunk, Anna is a damaged goth girl, and Kip is a stuttering chubby kid. Run Hide Fight expends no effort to visualize motives, leaving them as bland social outcast types.

Supporting cast members are similarly underdeveloped, with Todd a veteran that uses his skills to help his daughter, Jennifer the platitude spouting specter, and Tarsy the confused and unprepared authority figure. Simplicity normally works in these kinds of movies, but this situation demands more dissection than Rankin is willing to provide.

The Action: Relying on the shock of the subject matter can only get the movie so far, and after Run Hide Fight gets past that, it plays out its title in rather forgettable fashion.

An attempt to build suspense is made early, as Zoe spots Chris in the middle of an empty field before arriving at school, but the movie only really starts working once the attack commences. The filmmakers are wise to keep the harrowing nature of a school shooting in the forefront, exploitative as it may be. Students are coldly gunned down, with some survivors finding their way to Zoe and dying in her arms, alerting her to the situation. Mechanical behavior is what makes this work, as the staff who think they can talk the teens down quickly find out that they’re not here to have a conversation – only to monologue.

Once the whole of the situation develops, Zoe is stuck in the middle crawling through vents and trying to get the somehow still unaware rest of the school off the premises. This gets her shot but somehow leaves her unaffected. Indeed, she only gets stronger throughout the runtime as she spends little time working through the shooters once she gets her hands on weaponry. It makes sense that this puts her on even footing, but it doesn’t allow for any interesting setpieces amidst the growing repetition of the action, which is shot in the same leering back and forth way every single time.

The third act allows Todd to assist Zoe from afar with his hunting rifle, which doesn’t exactly expand the scale of Run Hide Fight, nor does it keep it realistic, but it breaks up the monotony of Rankin’s action scenes as he monitors Zoe, the shooters, the cops, and the students at the same time, bringing them to a head with the threat of a large explosion maintaining momentum. This costs the movie its semi-believability, but at least it’s something going on in a movie that somehow makes its endangerment of kids and young adults a slog.

The Technics: For a low budget movie, Run Hide Fight looks quite good. Whatever cameras were used lend a nice level of detail, but that doesn’t mean much when the overall construction is so middling.

Presumably in an attempt to mimic actual standoffs set in schools, the movie is paced quite poorly. After Tristan and company make their entrance, the movie slows to a crawl. This might’ve worked if there was a bad guy on the prowl for Zoe during her efforts to get people out of the school, but Rankin didn’t make that choice – instead he treats viewers to alternating scenes of Tristan monologuing to the students and livestream audience and Zoe uneventfully telling each classroom to stay quiet and get out. Maybe I’ve seen too many Die Hard clones for my own good, but Run Hide Fight still does far too much running and hiding without the action or suspense to support itself.

Everything else about the movie is thoroughly unremarkable. The high school atmosphere is acceptable (considering this movie released not long after I graduated myself, the dialogue is somewhat close to how high schoolers talked during the late 2010s.), the effects are laudably practical, Matthew Lorentz’s editing is fine, if slack, the cinematography is competent but repetitive, and the music is entirely bland. While there are some (extra?) blatant moments of exploitation, the production is content to be forgettable.

If one clears the hurdle and divorces Run Hide Fight from its setting, it quickly becomes another in a long line of limited location action movies. Apart from morbid curiosity and the initial shock value, there’s no point in running towards watching it.

45/100