WhenShana Feste’s take on a date gone wrong premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020, it was critically panned for its surreal conceptual twist that dramatized the truckload of underdeveloped thematic concerns already infused in the film.Some critics claimedthat maintaining the film’s initial realism would have upheld the integrity of its themes — but that so isn’t the point ofRun Sweetheart Run. It’s a film worth revisiting because its brief social exploration is really just the jumping-off point for Feste’s spiral into an unhinged yet thrilling revenge film.Run Sweetheart Runis vastly compelling outside its social agenda, with a campy and self-aware tone that audiences can delight in, especially as Feste delivers one of the most overlooked and masterful scenes in the genre.
What Is ‘Run Sweetheart Run’ About?
Ella Balinkska’sCherie’s life is filled with misogynistic micro-aggressionsand slights that a working-class woman will generally face on a day-to-day basis in a male-dominated field. She is a personal assistant at a Los Angeles law firm, and alongside co-screenwriterKelly Terrel, Feste writes in clear gender, racial and class divides within Cherie’s working relationships. She is the Black, female personal assistant of the white, wealthy male lawyer James Fuller (Clark Gregg). After accidentally double-booking her boss’s evening with a client meeting and his anniversary dinner with his wife,he asks her to fill in for him with the client.Placed in an impossible position, Cherie obliges.
Cue a wholly relatable scene of Cherie searching up the client beforehand and being impressed by his handsome appearance. She dresses up accordingly, in a sultry red dress, covered by a work-on-the-outside trench coat. But he is still a man, so pepper spray is a must. When Cherie meets Ethan (Pilou Asbæk), the film veers into romantic comedy territory, asshe swoons over his gentlemanly behavior but is also horrified when her period bleeds out onto her floor.Why does her menstrual cycle matter?You’ll see. After improvising with a makeshift pad, she is whisked away on a romantic date of dinner and rollerblading. But things take a dark twist when she goes in for a nightcap, only to run out of his mansion with mascara draped down her cheeks and her dress torn dramatically.
The hunt doesn’t truly begin until Cherie asks for two female strangers to call 911, and upon the police officer’s arrival, she is promptly arrested for public intoxication. In the cell she meets a sex worker (Tara Buck) who recognizes the man who can only make a gin and tonic, and hates canines, urging her to seek the help of the elusive “First Lady.” Ethan then makes his dramatic entrance; he clearly has the cops in his pocket, andlays out therules of the hunt: she will be released and has until dawn to escape. The film spirals into this adrenaline-fueled chase, made even more disastrous by Ethan’s strange ability to smell her period blood until a biblical twist turns the tables and gives Cherie her own taste for bloodlust.
‘Run Sweetheart Run’ Thrives Outside its Social Agenda
Feste’s social commentary is fairly sharp and insightful during the realistic stages of the film, where the use of a single word can create such an uncomfortable effect.Run Sweetheart Runcapitalizes on the infantilizing and misogynistic use of “sweetheart,“where it is used duringeveryday grievances of womenbeing minimized by men, to Ethan’s more sinister use of it just before ushering Cherie in for a nightcap. The sexism gradually increases, as her boss speaks to her in a demeaning way, to the lewd stranger groping her on the bus.Theintroduction was actually changedfrom when the film premiered at Sundance— it initially set up Cherie and Ethan’s meet-cute as a blind date. Framing it as her boss’s client’s dinner further pushes Cherie into the victim position due to the added layer of manipulation, which, in turn, emphasizes the resilience and grit she responds with when the night turns on its heel.
Feste also told Entertainment Weeklyabout her inspiration forRun Sweetheart Run. “I loved the idea of making a social horror film,” she explains. “So I kind of challenged myself to think of, ‘What would the equivalent ofGet Outbe for women?’” LikeJordan Peele’s highly acclaimed horror, Feste imbues a surreal and unbelievable conceptual twist in her film. Although it is not as palatable asGet Out’s is, once we move past it, we can appreciate the film’s campy, self-aware, and chaotic tone. It transforms into abiblical fever dreamthat dials up the horror of it all. While the film’s take on feminist themes is sharp and insightful, mostly in the beginning,it doesn’t compare with the authentic tension and schlocky violence that makes for the ultimate girl’s movie night.
Feste Creates a Self-Aware, Campy Tone in ‘Run Sweetheart Run’
While there are feminist undercurrents, this B-film is incredibly self-aware,where its tone is masterfully encapsulated in one particular, truly underrated scene that deserves recognition. It is placed at the point whenthe film shifts from a rom-com to a horror. Despite Cherie’s instincts to return home, she walks into Ethan’s house for a nightcap. As the camera pans towards the door, placed centrally in the frame,Ethan jarringly turns around and breaks the fourth wall, sternly lifting his hand and barring the camera from following them in. It directly calls back to the media’s history of depictingviolence against women on screen, as it intentionally pivots away by only letting us hear Cherie’s screams and glass shattering from outside the door in a long, uninterrupted shot. However, the impact is two-fold, as it also adds another layer of mystique to Ethan’s character, foreshadowing his more ethereal roots later on while complementing the idea of hunting in the darkness of the night.
The 10 Best Psychological Horror Movies With Great Acting, Ranked
“I got hypnotized last night.”
The camera patiently waits for the door to open, and Cherie bolts through in her newly distraught appearance, with labored breathing as she escapes the initial attack.Immediately, blood-red capital letters are plastered onto the screen: RUN!This is where the campiness begins, as Cherie tumbles forth into the night and only the most bizarre plot twists hit her. The words make more appearances at pivotal points of the film, and they are ludicrously satisfying. They remind us that Feste is constantly aware of the film’s surrealism and B-movie status — though she may have been inspired by thesocially-driven horror ofGet Out, she approaches her own attempt with an outrageous flavor. In fact, the integrity of her social agenda mirrors the tone of the film. It begins with a grounded depiction of sexism which dissipates in a farcical and fantastical twist that promises us bloody fun and relieves us of grating reality.
‘Run Sweetheart Run’s Performances Give Us A Date From Hell
The compelling performances given byRun Sweetheart Run’s two central actors also cinch its unique and riveting atmosphere. Balinska ensures we empathize with Cherie’s plight throughout every step of the film, as pure terror haunts her facial expressions at every beat, yet she has an iron backbone that carries her through the night. She also adds to the campy tone, especially asshe rolls her eyes whenever her period blood makes an appearance— a painfully relatable experience that soon turns morbid after realizingEthan can follow her bloody scent. We easily root for this plucky and resourceful character, even as she is constantly failed by the people who have the resources or the job to protect her (including her seemingly helpful and concerned boss), and instead finds help in the most unexpected of places.
This is how the film refreshinglytouches on intersectional feminism, as it is not only gender that comes into play here. When Cherie runs out of the building, her pleas for help are ignored by wealthy women holed up in their beautiful estates, content to distance themselves from their neighbor’s extracurricular activities. Even the two female strangers who call the police warn the 911 operator that Cherie appears untrustworthy in her disheveled state, despite the large cut on her forehead (perhaps a bit too unbelievable, but it’s the perfect dramatization of real prejudices). Instead,the only real help Cherie receives is from cheating exes, bus drivers, and sex workers— all lower-class folk who can empathize with her distress.
ButGame ofThrones’s alum Asbæk really captures how terrifying a male predator can be.His on-screen chemistry with Balinska is unnervingly deceiving, as their easy banter and romantic glances during their date truly play out like an innocent rom-com. In fact, we are also positioned to gush over his chivalry, up until he makes jarring eye contact with the camera, with his eyes stripped of his previous glamor. For the rest of the film, his eyes are manically widened and there is a ghost of a smirk always lingering at the edge of his lips, perfecting the demonic look that relishes in Cherie’s fearful reactions. He is singularly terrifying and repulsive, making us troubled by how we initially responded to his more swoony character — we also fell for the trap.Run Sweetheart Rundeserves another look for its campy, torrid, and self-aware atmosphere, giving us a date from literal hell.
Run Sweetheart Run
Run Sweetheart Runis available to stream now on Prime Video in the U.S.
WATCH ON Amazon PRIME
