I’m a little exhausted with indie filmmakers setting every horror film in the eighties based on some hope that if it’s set in a nostalgic decade, the film will in effect be a gem. It’s not enough to show characters playing classic Nintendo, and walking around with neon colors. “Run, Hide, Die” garners a lot of inexplicable elements, from the eighties setting that adds nothing to the overall narrative, right down to the title that in no way reflects the film at al. It adds up to a pretty miserable dramatic thriller that poses as a horror film, and fails to deliver on every aspect. It spends too much time on characterization, offers no interesting villain, and just delights in being melodramatic when it should be terrifying.
Addison is a young girl still grieving the death of her husband. She’s spent many years locked in her house, until she’s invited to her aunt’s cabin for the weekend. Conveniently, she decides to invite her friends, all of whom gather together to give Addison the time of her life and help her forget her grief for a while. I went in to “Run, Hide, Die” expecting a slasher film, but found nothing but a glorified Lifetime film that built up to an explosion that never actually happened. “Run, Hide, Die” barely clocks in at eighty minutes, and spends about forty five of those painstakingly establishing five characters, all of which are paper thin and interchangeable when we get right down to it.
To make things worse, the narrative itself is paper thin with director Collin Joseph Neal stretching what should have been a forty five minute movie in to one long dry exercise in tedium. For long periods of time there is nothing to “Run, Hide, Die,” letting us watch a group of girls laugh, roughhouse, and engage in nostalgic conversations, all the while wiling the weekend away. Collin Joseph Neal apparently wants us to love these characters, but really you’ll spend your time wondering when the shoe will drop on these people.
The performances aren’t particularly awful, it’s just Collin Joseph Neal quite obviously has no idea where to go with his own movie. When the shit finally hits the fan, we’re subjected to a lot of pointless torture, the revelation of a convoluted and utterly far fetched revenge plot, and a plot twist that falls flat. I assume while writing the script the twist seemed like one big punch to the gut, but in the midst of the monotony, you simply don’t care enough to press on and see where it all ends. Neal’s film is just a mess from the jumping point. The editing is nonsensical, the action is incoherent, and the final scene was just so confusing I turned it off and happily moved on.