Run Sweetheart Run

Thanks to a recent surge in female-driven horror, the concept of women in genre films no longer feels like a novelty. So when a director chooses to make a scary film that’s centered around the female experience, it better be daring and disruptive. Such is the case with “Run Sweetheart Run,” a wild, twisted tale of female empowerment that is as political as it is terrifying. After a bad breakup, hardworking single mother Cherie (Ella Balinska) is set up on a blind date with the handsome Ethan (Pilou Asbæk). He’s sophisticated, magnetic, and ever the charmer. When Cherie agrees to return to…

This movie is very well made and looks good enough, certainly, but there are elements to its plot and presentation that drags the score down somewhat for me. I think that it wants to be both a social commentary on the predatory nature of powerful men against young women, but then strays into supernatural qualities and finally biblical ones, and I'm not sure that that journey is warranted. If it had settled into one of the three, it might have pulled off a better presentation overall, but now I was left feeling as though the movie wasn't internally quite as consistent as it could have been.…