***SPOILER ALERTS***
On Thursday, Jan. 14, The Daily Wire premiered its first feature film Run Hide Fight. A “gut-wrenching film,” as co-CEO Jeremy Boreing calls it, the movie depicts a high school shooting. The protagonist Zoe Hull (played by Isabel May) decides to take a stand, helping students escape and combating the violence. Zoe and her friend Lewis Washington (played by Olly Sholotan) are two outcasts on “Senior Day,” ready to graduate and move on. Nonetheless, like their classmates, they are thrown into a maddening situation that forces them to act. The sheriff, played by Everwood star and Golden Globe nominated Treat Williams, is thrown off guard by a fire started as a distraction in a nearby field by the town. The four psychotic school shooters, Tristan Voy (actor Eli Brown), Chris Jelick (actor Britton Sear), Anna Jelick (actress Catherine Davis), and Kip Quade (actor Cyrus Arnold) put on quite a hypnotizing performance — channeling their inner Joaquin Phoenix in Joker.
The villains of Run Hide Fight all exhibit some form of emotional problem, common among school shooters. For instance, Tristan has an obsession with fame and notoriety — wishing to sadistically broadcast his murders to the world through a livestream. He wants retribution on his careless teachers, and the classmates who “ignored” him. Chris hears and acts on voices. It is assumed that Anna participates because of her association with her brother Chris. And Kip has traumatic memories of being naked in the school auditorium from his youth — imagining that people are still fixated on his embarrassment.
Kip (Cyrus Arnold’s character), however, is the sole dissenter to his three murderous classmates in the end: the nerdy villain who tries to change course, after being convinced of joining the good side by Zoe when captured.
“Kip is a very unbalanced 18-year-old who’s extraordinarily naïve. Even so, there’s a sliver of humanity left in him. Zoe brings that out later in the movie, and she helps him confront the reality of what he’s doing,” Arnold told The Daily Wire.
The 18-year-old, who previously played Derek, Jr. in comedy Zoolander 2 and starred as David ‘Truck’ Johnson III in nine episodes of The Exorcist, also had a role in the thriller Runt with now deceased Cameron Boyce — which explores similar coming-of-age themes and won an award at the 2020 Mammoth Film Festival.
Director Kyle Rankin mentored Arnold throughout the process, helping him develop the sort of character he had in mind for the complex Kip Quade. “As awful as Kip and his fellow shooters are, I didn’t approach Kip as if he was a villain. Kip’s very anxious throughout the entire movie, so I approached Kip as if he was a scared kid, angry at the world and afraid about what it thinks about him,” Arnold said.
Instead of viewing his character as a flat-out and irredeemable villain, Arnold attempted to get a better read on why anyone might commit such a horrific act. Depicting a murderous teenager was uncharted territory for the young actor. “Kyle sent 12 movies to study in order to understand the kind of movie that was being made. I was really inspired by Sal from ‘Dog Day Afternoon.’ I’ve played the ‘bad guy’ before…and I’ve played the bully, but Kip went further than those characters did in terms of cruelness,” Arnold said.
Arnold spoke fondly of his experience working with Director Kyle Rankin — who most recently co-wrote horror-thriller The Witch Files (2018) and directed Night of the Living Deb in 2015 starring Maria Thayer and Michael Cassidy. Even though Arnold had his reservations about the film being “too exploitive,” and how it would portray villains, Rankin made the process smooth and enjoyable.
“Kyle was sensitive, smart and hardworking. His expertise and the insight he had about his characters brought another level of depth to the project. I realize that a lot of people consider Run Hide Fight to be a Die Hard-esque action movie, but with Kyle, it felt more like a smart and unsettling thriller…Kyle perfectly balanced giving the villains substance, while not excusing any part of their behavior,” he told The Daily Wire.
Arnold was also sure to explore his character as more than a shallow villain. “All of the good guys act out of bravery, from the lunch lady, to Zoe. All of the villains act out of fear. We’re not trying to make you sympathize with any of the shooters. People should understand that the roles Eli, Britton, and I played did something wholly evil, and there’s no excuse,” he said.
Evidently, it aided the budding actor to have a Hollywood veteran by his side, who was able to contribute to his understanding of how to build the aesthetic of Kip Quade. Arnold harps on the fact that the film is not just an action piece. It is a cutting-edge, psychological thriller that feels like an emotional roller coaster throughout.
There have been only a handful of feature films that have tried to fictionalize and capture the reality of our world after the Columbine High School Shooting in 1999, a subject largely viewed as taboo in Hollywood circles. Director Kyle Rankin and co-CEO Jeremy Boreing discussed this on the night of the premiere, citing the fact that the film is an ambitious project, perhaps standing at the farthest end of The Daily Wire’s spectrum.
However, The Daily Wire were sure not to enter the entertainment industry in order to provide standard and mundane content. We do “not aspire to and will never make films for adults that meet the requirements of Pureflix,” Boreing said in response to a criticism of the film’s violence.
That said, I don’t want to mislead you. Daily Wire does not aspire to and will never make films for adults that meet the “requirements of PureFlix.” We don’t believe in that standard. If that’s what someone wants, PureFlix already exists! We’re building something different.
— Jeremy Boreing (@JeremyDBoreing) January 17, 2021
Run Hide Fight may have been distributed by right-leaning outlet The Daily Wire, but there is nothing one-sided about the film. “I want people to understand that Run Hide Fight doesn’t endorse a specific political viewpoint,” Arnold said. “Objectively, it’s a story about a courageous girl getting over her past…”
Instead of relying on messaging or propagandizing about gun control — which certainly could have been the consequence of a conservative organization’s foray into Hollywood — the film aims to entertain and take its audience on a tense, gripping, action-packed journey. By depicting the tormented and disturbed nature of Kip Quade — and his classmates — viewers are given a glimpse into a chilling school shooting, and the minds of those involved.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.