“Run Amok” is one of those movies where you can really feel the intention behind it, even when the execution doesn’t always land as cleanly as it wants to. Writer-director NB Mager’s debut is undeniably thoughtful, centering the aftermath of a school shooting on the students who actually had to live with it rather than the adults who tend to dominate these stories. The unusual angle is that these teenagers have decided to stage a musical about the tragedy.
The film’s narrative framing is bold and uncomfortable, but not really effective beyond that. Mager has a keen sense for the absurd nature of America’s grief culture, especially when it comes to empty platitudes, reactive policies, and symbolic gestures that make people feel like they’re doing something without actually helping anyone heal.
At the center of the story is the prickly and awkward Meg (Alyssa Marvin), whose mother was the teacher killed in the shooting. She’s a classic example of a theater kid, and her attempt to process grief through art feels sincere. These characters are written from a place of understanding, capturing the misplaced confidence and emotional oversharing that is particularly on brand for today’s teenagers.
There’s a lot of dark humor here, and while funny, some of it gets awfully close to crossing into inappropriate territory. The film sometimes feels like it’s circling its biggest ideas rather than fully grappling with them. The satire is fierce (like a joke about the PTA morphing into a “Parents Teacher Arms Association”), yet the film often pulls back just when it seems ready to dig deeper into America’s gun culture and the systems that normalize this kind of violence.
“Run Amok” is an interesting, well-made film with a creative and inventive approach to its subject matter, but it stops short of the harder conversations it gestures toward. As a conversation starter and character-driven exploration of unresolved grief, it’s worth a look, even if it doesn’t quite know how far it wants to go.
By: Louisa Moore
Screen Zealots 