In an active shooter situation, you have three options.
Run Hide Fight is a 2020 action thriller written and directed by Kyle Rankin and starring Isabel May, Thomas Jane, Radha Mitchell, Treat Williams, and Barbara Crampton, whose plot can essentially be pitched as "Die Hard in a high school shooting".
Zoe Hull is a 17-year-old high school student raised by her ex-military outdoorsman father Todd, her mother Jennifer having recently passed away from cancer. On a seemingly ordinary day at Vernon Central High School, her life and those of everybody around her are turned upside down when a van crashes into the cafeteria and four of her classmates — the charismatic sociopath leader Tristan, the long-suffering bullying victim Kip, the mentally unstable Chris, and the moody goth girl Anna — start murdering people before taking the entire school hostage. Zoe, who was in the bathroom when the shooting started, has a chance to escape, but instead, driven by instinct, she runs right back in to take the fight to the killers and save the school.
Originally produced by Cinestate, it was picked up by Ben Shapiro's news website The Daily Wire for distribution after Cinestate collapsed in a sexual assault scandal, making it their first foray into film. It premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September 2020, and on The Daily Wire's website on January 14, 2021.
Tropes:
- Action Girl: Zoe, who viewers are introduced to going out on a hunting trip with her father, scoring a brutal kill.
- Air Vent Escape: How Zoe gets out of the bathroom, as befitting any proper Die Hard riff.
- Attention Whore: A not-insignificant part of Tristan's plan is to become famous by killing people. Zoe gets under his skin by pointing out that, by being the hero, she's completely stolen his thunder and made him into the villain of her story.Zoe: They're not gonna remember you. You're gonna remember me.
- Axes at School: Courtesy of Tristan and his goons.
- Big Bad: Tristan Voy is the leader of the shooters who attack the school.
- Bleed 'Em and Weep: Zoe throws up after killing Anna.
- Book Ends: Zoe's father's speech on how to deal with a fatally-wounded animal.
- Boom, Headshot!: Zoe kills Anna with her own gun after a brief struggle. Later, Chris is sniped by Zoe's father Todd from outside the school right before he can shoot her.
- Bottomless Magazines: When Kip is chasing Zoe, he fires five shots out of a double-barrel shotgun without ever being seen or heard reloading.
- Break Them by Talking: When Zoe manages to subdue Kip, they have a conversation about the killers' motives. Kip complains that he has been bullied for most of his schooling life, and Zoe simply replies that it doesn't even come close to justifying cold-blooded murder. When Tristan forces Zoe to go to the cafeteria, she frees Kip and even returns his gun to give him a chance to redeem himself. Kip gets killed after trying to get Tristan and Chris to stand down, allowing Zoe and Lewis to escape the cafeteria; however, Lewis gets hurt in the crossfire.
- Bring My Brown Pants: The school resource officer wets himself after being threatened by Tristan.
- Chekhov's Gun: Multiple minor details in the beginning come into play as the movie goes on. A good example are the balloons in the teacher's lounge, which Zoe uses to get an upper hand on Anna.
- The camera focuses on a backpack left in the office a few times. It has a bomb in it.
- Childhood Friend Romance: Lewis has a crush on Zoe and tries asking her to the prom. In the third act of the movie she reveals that the feeling is mutual and kisses him.
- Contrived Coincidence: An almost improbable amount of little details contribute to ensuring Zoe's survival throughout the film. That being said, this doesn't take anything away from Zoe's decisiveness and well-honed instincts.
- Crazy-Prepared: Tristan's escape plan was to pick a victim close enough to be mistaken for him and blow them up, rendering them unrecognizable, while taking their outfit and escaping with the other survivors. He then goes to a nearby bridge where he's hidden cash and other identification to get himself out of the city. Unfortunately for him, Zoe spots him attempting to get away and guns him down before he can escape.
- Cruel Mercy: Zoe shoots Tristan as he's trying to escape, but deliberately avoids a fatal shot and refuses to Mercy Kill him as she did with the deer at the beginning. Either he bleeds out or the cops find him.
- Depraved Bisexual: In a very brief scene, Chris moves in for a kiss with Tristan. When he pulls away, they get in a short argument regarding whether Tristan loves him or his sister more, to which he replies he loves them both. That said, it's unclear whether he was truly bisexual, or just manipulating them to get them to join in his rampage.
- "Die Hard" on an X: Specifically, in a high school during a mass shooting.
- Dysfunction Junction: The shooters. Tristan is a psychopath who wants to prove a point about the media and be famous, Chris is a schizophrenic who hears people talking to him, Anna is Chris' sister and seemingly in a three way relationship with her brother and Tristan, and finally you have Kip who has been relentlessly bullied to the point of murderous rage.
- External Combustion: The van that the shooters plowed into the cafeteria is loaded with explosives meant to destroy the school when all is said and done. Zoe manages to get it outside so it can explode harmlessly in the parking lot.
- Face Death with Dignity: The cafeteria lady who goes to confront one of the killers in order to protect Zoe."You should be ashamed-" <BLAM>
- Faking the Dead:
- Zoe lays down on the floor and poses as one of the victims of the office bomb when she hears Anna coming to inspect the carnage.
- Tristan switches clothes with a student and then blows him up so the body won't be identified immediately.
- Fan Disservice: Ms. Nunez, played by Cindy Vela, is forced to take off her shirt and bra at gun point. The entire situation is played entirely straight, with no attempt to downplay how gross it really is.
- Foreshadowing:
- In the beginning of the movie, Zoe's mother talks to her in the kitchen, but is suspiciously absent when her father comes inside. Sure enough, it's revealed pretty soon that it was a vision.
- Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Zoe calls out Kip on thinking that his years of being bullied in any way excuse his present actions.
- Hearing Voices:
- Zoe frequently talks to visions of her dead mother.
- Chris, one of the shooters, has it even worse, ranting about symbols and constantly seeing things that aren't there.
- Zoe's dad also admits at the end of the film to once in awhile doing this.
- Heroic Sacrifice: The cafeteria lady stands up to get caught by one of the shooters so Zoe won't be. Kip later turns on Tristan and Chris, which gives Zoe and Lewis a chance to escape the cafeteria.
- Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday: The massacre takes place on senior prank day.
- Iconic Outfit: Zoe apparently wears her father's Army jacket often enough for Tristan to call her "green jacket girl."
- I'm Cold... So Cold...: Lewis complains that the classroom Zoe brings him in after he is shot is too cold. He survives his wound.
- Mercy Kill: Zoe does this to a deer she shoots while hunting with her father.
- Missing Mom: Jennifer Hull, implicitly from cancer.
- New Media Are Evil: Tristan believes that, in the age of social media, everybody has proclaimed themselves judge and jury, so he's gonna be the executioner. He orders Lewis to livestream the massacre, and when he finds out that he has become the number one trending topic, he says "about time." In his initial speech, he also threatens to kill all the students if the stream is cut off.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: For a loose definition of "hero", but after Zoe successfully evacuates several students, the media interview them. Tristan sees this on the news, and doesn't take it well when he learns he has lost hostages.
- Papa Wolf: Todd grabs his sniper rifle and starts looking for ways to protect his daughter, ultimately saving her by killing Chris.
- Police Are Useless: The school's resource officer proves completely ineffectual.
- The cops outside are genuinely trying, but due to the situation can't resolve anything. Part of this is due to Tristan setting fire elsewhere, which distracts them and causes a traffic jam to further delay them.
- Redemption Equals Death: Kip is gunned down when he tries to stop Tristan and Chris with his shotgun in the cafeteria.
- Retired Badass: Todd is a military veteran who teaches Zoe how to hunt.
- The Smurfette Principle: One of the killers, Anna, is female, specifically Tristan's girlfriend and Chris' sister.
- Shoot Out the Lock: Seen twice. To get around the school's lockdown policy Kip simply blows holes in the wooden doors, reaches through, and unlocks the door.
- Skewed Priorities: The school's resource officer knows that there's an active shooter on campus, but changes his pants to hide the fact that he wet himself before telling anyone. This ultimately leads to his death and everyone in the office when the bomb goes off.
- Spirit Advisor: Throughout the film, Zoe's mother Jennifer appears to her in spirit form to help guide her. It's left up in the air if it's really her ghost or if Zoe's just imagining her.
- Spree Killer: The four villains, who plan to blow up the school when all is said and done.
- Teens Are Monsters: The villains are all walking stereotypes about nihilistic teenagers.
- Title Drop: Each word in the title is spoken by the spirit of Zoe's mom right as she needs to do those specific actions in order to survive.
- Why Don't Ya Just Shoot Him?: At one point, Tristan gets Zoe to surrender herself to him by threatening to murder hostages if she doesn't come to the cafeteria unarmed. Despite her representing a significant threat, he decides not to immediately kill her because he thinks it would be "bad for ratings." This buys enough time for Kip to draw a gun on him, creating a distraction that allows her to escape.
