Film Review: RUN AMOK: Builds Toward Promise But Loses Its Emotional Edge [Sundance 2026]

Run Amok Review

Run Amok (2026) Film Review from the 49th Annual Sundance Film Festival, a movie directed by NB Mager, written by NB Mager and starring Alyssa Marvin, Patrick Wilson, Margaret Cho, Sophia Torres, Elizabeth Marvel, Molly Ringwald, Bill Camp, Yul Vazquez, and Connor Ratliff.

Run Amok is an intense film that builds toward something, but that direction changes as the film’s storyline evolves, eventually delivering what could have been a more satisfying ending.

Meg the Director

Meg the student, in many respects, is like any other learner in her high school, minus her morose and unique connection to it; yet Meg the director exudes confidence, not only in herself but also in her vision for the various versions of her play.

Watching Meg (Alyssa Marvin)’s face go cold when faced with opposition to her direction for an aspect of the play is when the viewer sees Meg’s suppressed anger at the loss of her mother, and possibly at a world that could let that occur, briefly come to the surface. These are also the moments Marvin gives her most nuanced performance in the Run Amok—overt is replaced with subtle and then back again, and it’s all done through quick, marvelous facial expressions à la Nia DaCosta’s Hedda.

Would that personality quirk exist in Meg if the school shooting had never taken place and her mother had not been taken from her? There is no way to be sure, but the viewer can infer no.

Meg’s damage from the shooting is inward, even though she was not present at the school that day, while Mr. Shelby (Patrick Wilson)’s damage is outward; he was there that day, yet his personality doesn’t seem to have been pierced by the incident.

The Mother

Meg confronting the community pariah, the shooter’s mother, Nancy (Elizabeth Marvel), is a potent start-and-stop sequence in Run Amok. Will Meg say something to her? How will Nancy respond? Like the growing anxiety by school administrators about the potential content of the stage production, there is a similar tension from Run Amok‘s viewer about the inevitable Meg and Nancy conversation / confrontation.

When it transpires, it doesn’t disappoint and is one of the highlights of the film. The line “His head was your job” sticks to the viewer and the moment, succinctly summing up Nancy’s former responsibility with her son. A mixture of hate, love, and confusion, from Nancy’s hindsight perspective, is apparently what led to the shooting, providing a new present-day understanding of the event for Meg and almost a screaming match between teacher (Mr. Shelby) and student (Meg) about the nature of a killer. It is an instance of great escalation and subplot convergence in Run Amok.

Plastic Guns

The “act” of normality is rampant in Run Amok. Most school administrators and faculty are in an active state of pretense, evidenced by the presence of hip-worn plastic guns. It’s group distress management, and it’s never spoken of out loud, but the cracks in that façade are visible, i.e., Mr. Hunt (Bill Camp) and his off-putting deterioration.

This plot element for Run Amok shows the viewer how ingrained the past is in the present of the school, no matter how much some try to pretend to the contrary. The polyurethane weapons make everyone feel better, protected, and clothed. They were caught naked and unprepared once. They will not be so again. The Mattel pistols are fake armor, but they allow everyone at the school to breathe and function. In that limited role—maintaining continuity—the sidearms serve their purpose.

The Stage Production

The first incarnation of Meg’s play is a retelling of the events of the shooting. This is the narrative hook of Run Amok that initially grabs the viewer and pulls them close.

That and its successor are the best incarnations of the play: one with the aforementioned reenactment and the other with personal monologues of certain victims and survivors.

Director NB Mager wisely doesn’t use flashbacks in Run Amok, keeping the viewer in the moment through these versions of the play, bringing out different aspects of the shooting in different ways, e.g., the walking tour and the echoing gunshot sounds.

The onstage “Amazing Grace” moment is as wonderful, sad, and powerful as a similar scene in ABC’s My So-Called Life where one thing is being said while the subtext bursts forth like a volcano, emotionally splattering its participants.

As Meg learns more and more about the day of the shooting, her play morphs with that changing perception, mirroring an adolescent’s capriciousness, transient attention span, and sponge-like mind.

As this process occurs, the play’s carnage becomes abstract and watered-down as the production transforms. The play eventually loses its visceral edge, ironically the very outcome Mr. Shelby and the principal desire. I recognize that a play re-enacting a violent event is the road most traveled, but sometimes, zagging instead of zigging pulls away from a narrative promise rather than delivering it.

Run Amok builds up to the final presentation, but that production has no punch, no power. It’s conceptual. It’s cathartic, at least for some of its participants, but there is no sensory or emotional explosion. It does come, however, with some surprises: one deleterious (an uninvited guest) and one ameliorative (a run).

The latter emphasizes that a type of healing is happening—a metaphorical sprinting away from something, leaving it behind, in favor of an unknown in front of them. It is hopeful and energetic, a portion of the sentiments Run Amok wants to leave in the viewer’s mind before the credits roll.

Rating: 8/10

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