Sundance review: 'Run Amok' tries to mine dark humor out of school tragedy, but can't sustain the balancing act to the end

A promising idea runs aground in “Run Amok,” writer-director NB Mager’s dark satire about kids and adults taking very different approaches in the aftermath of a school shooting a decade earlier.

Meg, charmingly played by Alyssa Marvin, is a nerdy overachieving sophomore at her high school, who lugs her harp from home to school regularly so she can practice twice as much. She lives with her aunt (Molly Ringwald) and uncle (Yul Vazquez), and her cousin, Penny (Sophia Torres), who’s usually annoyed by Meg’s artistic endeavors. Meg lives with these relatives because her mother, a teacher at the high school Meg and Penny now attend, was killed in a school shooting a decade earlier.

Now, with the school planning a 10th anniversary commemoration, Meg has proposed creating a theater piece — a musical that reenacts the events of that horrific day. Meg is vague on the details to her music teacher, Mr. Shelby (Patrick Wilson), and the principal (Margaret Cho) thinks Meg is just going to perform something innocuous, like “Amazing Grace.”

As rehearsals start, Meg dives into researching the shooting, which happened when she was just 4 years old. We learn uncomfortable details about the student who did the shooting, as Meg reaches out to his mom (Blair Sams), who has become a neighborhood pariah. We also learn about Mr. Shelby’s role in disarming and killing the shooter, which has made him a hero in the school. We also see that the shop teacher, Mr. Hunt (Bill Camp), has the most visible signs of PTSD from that day. 

Mager sets up a tricky high-wire act with this premise, cleverly exposing the conflict when teens want to explore the history that their elders would rather forget. Alas, it’s not sustainable, and the delicate balance of humor about tragedy in “Run Amok” comes crashing down in the final half hour. 

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‘Run Amok’

★★1/2

Screening in the U.S. Dramatic competition of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. Not rated, but probably R for language and descriptions of violence. Running time: 103 minutes.

The film screens again: Tuesday, Jan. 27, 12:30 p.m., Redstone Cinemas 1, Park City; Thursday, Jan. 29, 9 p.m., Rose Wagner Center for the Performing Arts, Salt Lake City; Friday, Jan. 30, 8:45 p.m., The Ray, Park City; Saturday, Jan. 31, 7 p.m., Holiday Village Cinemas 2, Park City. Also screening on Sundance’s web portal, Thursday through Sunday, Jan. 29 to Feb. 1.