‘Run Amok’ Review: Ample Charm and Some Strong Performances Help Keep Messy School Shooting Dramedy Afloat

School shootings have been part of American life since the Columbine massacre shocked the nation in 1999. In the decades since, such tragedies have only continued, increasing in number every year as the federal and state governments do nothing to stop them. Police have been ineffective in saving lives; ditto campus security. America’s children are seen as the least important part of this country’s never-ending gun control debate. It’s been over 25 years of kids and teens being gunned down in the one place where they should feel the safest. School is hard enough without the threat of death looming in the hallways and classrooms. The myth of heroic law enforcement runs cover for police officers who would rather take a life than put their own on the line.

It is in these conditions that we find Run Amoka film that gives school shootings the Glee treatment. The story follows Meg (Alyssa Marvin), a precocious high school freshman with modest clothes, glasses and a very formal way of speaking. A decade ago, her single mother was killed in a school shooting along with three students. She was the beloved art teacher at the high school, warm and encouraging. According to the shooter’s mother Nancy (Elizabeth Marvel), even he loved her, as difficult as it is for anyone to believe that. Meg has spent most of her life with her aunt Val (Molly Ringwald), uncle Dan (Yul Vazquez) and older cousin Penny (Sophia Torres). Meg’s relationship with Penny has been strained since high school began, exacerbated by their age difference.

Music teacher Mr. Shelby (Patrick Wilson) is put in charge of a commemoration show meant to inspire remembrance and healing. He was the one to step in and kill the shooter after a police officer failed to do so. There are hints throughout the film that he loved Meg’s mother and feels a sense of ownership of her memory and how students engage the tragedy.

But Meg is determined to do a musical about what really happened that day, putting all the details she can find about the shooting and her mother right on stage in front of everyone. She believes it will provide catharsis for her and the school, using her memory to make a statement. The main problem is that she’s not sure what that statement should be. As she works on the play, Mr. Shelby helps hide it from the school’s cautious Principal Linda (Margaret Cho), who has no idea a play is happening at all for most of the film.

With a small, diverse cast and the help of Penny, Meg puts together something that changes form as the film goes on. Director NB Mager uses Meg’s casting and rehearsal process to cycle through the many elements at play before, during and after the shooting. Marvin plays Meg as a girl who wants to keep all her emotions inside, saving them for the art. But when she begins an odd friendship with Nancy, her feelings slowly start pouring out of her.

Marvel does the best work in the film as Nancy, a woman who has chosen solitude as punishment for her son’s actions. Her house has become a ghostly object in the neighborhood, haunting anyone who walks by with the memory of violence. When Meg starts coming over to visit her, she wants answers. But instead of providing exposition, the scenes between Marvin and Marvel are quiet and pained with an odd sense of warmth.

None of the other adults in the film feel as real as Nancy, regardless of how much they speak. The worst performance comes, surprisingly, from Bill Camp, who plays the unstable wood shop teacher Mr. Hunt. His obsession with shooting squirrels with rubber bullets is an odd note to keep hitting in a film that wants to explore the very real emotional fallout of school shootings in this country. Everything about his character — including shooting a student in the hand — feels too broad for the complex story being told. Perhaps Mager is trying to highlight how adults’ love of guns hurts children, but that point is made much more eloquently by a group of concerned parents who call themselves the PTAA (Parent Teacher Arms Alliance). The film could have benefited from more time with these parents, who incorrectly believe that patrolling the halls and classrooms with rubber bullet guns will make their children safer.

Run Amok is stuffed with ideas about school shootings, gun control and mental illness that don’t quite come together into any coherent thesis. The film’s messiness is part of its charm, but it’s frustrating to see it deflate in the third act, brought down by the weight of its ambitions. The young cast of students manage to keep things afloat, carrying their flawed film over the finish line.