Run feat. Aneesh Chaganty

Hey, what is going on? You do everything for me. It's not fair. I'm your mom. It's my job to take care of you when you need me. And you need me. You may not understand this right now. But I am doing what I know is best for you. I will spend every minute of the power live making sure you never feel that way again. Hello, Sydney. Hi. Who is this? It's your killer hosts. My name is Parker, your resident horror fanatic. And this week I'm not a lonely podcaster. I am joined in this episode by the co-writer and director of Run, Anish Chaganti. So you don't want to miss out on my interview with him in this episode.

Stay tuned. And welcome to. What's your favorite scary movie? What's your favorite scary movie is a horror film podcast where we're on a journey to find our favorite scary movie one at a time. Whether you hate them or love them, join us and discover yours. Spoilers ahead. So plan your movie screening every weekend before the episode release. Oh hi! Oh, I've missed you so much too. Oh yeah, I hope your holiday was great. I hope you uh were safe. I hope you had a good time. Oh, mine was great. I watched that new movie uh on Hulu. Oh yeah, it's wild. It's called Run. Yeah, let's talk about it. Run was directed by Anish Chagantee, and stay tuned because here in a minute, I did a very exciting interview with Anish Chagantee, and he has some hot goss to spill about Run.

So definitely stick around so you can hear that interview in just a minute. Run was also co-written by Chagante and Sev Ohanian. You may recognize this duo as the same creators behind Searching from 2018, who you will uh which you will hear me reference in the interview with Anish Chaganty, but don't fear, nothing is really spoiled for that movie. But as mentioned in the intro, spoilers for Run Ahead, so make sure you can go check it out on Hulu before listening to this episode. Run stars Sarah Paulson as Diane Sherman. Of course, we all know Sarah Paulson. She is the Ryan Murphy queen, who is most famous, I would say, for American Horror Story, recently Ratchet on Netflix, American Crime Story.

She's in all of his stuff. And opposite Sarah Paulson is Kira Allen, who plays her daughter Chloe. And this is Kira's feature debut. And uh damn, what a debut it is. More on her later for sure. She has done mostly stage theater performing and has done some work off Broadway. And very exciting for this movie. She's a wheelchair user. She uh there have been some really exciting interviews that she's done in the New York Times, and I think I saw one on Variety and Harper's Bazaar about how excited she is to properly represent the disabled community by being a wheelchair user, playing a wheelchair user. So I think that's pretty cool. On Rotten Tomatoes, the average critic rating is 7.2 out of 10, and the average audience rating is a 7.9 out of 10.

The Rotten Tomatoes Critics Consensus says, quote, solid acting and expertly ratcheted tension ratchet help run transcend its familiar trappings to deliver a delightfully suspenseful thriller. Now to get us ready for my interview with Anish Chaganti, I have prepared a summary for you of the movie Run. It's a little reductive, just the bare bones, so you definitely want to watch it on Hulu to get the full experience. That means that she's grown up very close to her mother, Diane, who has taken constant care of her since birth. As Chloe prepares to leave for college, she notices that her mother's behavior starts becoming increasingly suspicious and desperate to keep her at home. Of course, shenanigans ensue, which include discovering she's been given dog medication, an intricate escape plan that involved crawling across her home's roof and falling downstairs and getting her sweet mailman murdered.

And of course, we discover that Diane has been poisoning her since birth to keep her in her wheelchair. Now it's obvious that Diane is a little bit psychotic, but what isn't so obvious is that she was never Chloe's mother in the first place, but kidnapped her from the hospital after the death of her own baby. Chloe drinks a poisonous liquid to land herself in the hospital safe and sound. Well, one last round of shenanigans, actually, and this one ends in a shootout with the police and Diane falling down a set of stairs herself. Years later, Chloe is married with children and relearning to walk. She visits Diane in some sort of prison hospital where she now feeds Diane pills to keep her trapped in bed.

The end. Alright, the time has come. Let's head on over to my very exciting interview with the director and co-writer of Run, Anish Chagante. Obviously, searching is still incredible. I just watched it again the other night and was like, ugh, weeping. Uh so I was just wondering, how did you come up with Run and what made you think like, this is my second movie? Um, you know, I think so much of Run was well, not I think, so much of this is a fact. So much of Run was designed to be the anti-searching. Um, in the sense that, like, you know, you saw searching recently, you know how complex it is, how crazy it is, how like unconventional it is.

And I like, as a filmmaker, it was, it would, it's very easy to see how I could just be in a box forever and just be the filmmaker who makes like that stuff, and just like immediately reductive to like the screen kind of things. And I, and I only ever, you know, we never expected searching to blow up the way it did. I was using it as an opportunity to make to start hopefully making movies, you know. Like it was the best thing that I could do given the resources that I had at the time, which was nothing. You know, we made that movie for no money and like somehow scrapped some people together to see it.

We got into Sundance, and then the rest was kind of history. So, like, because of that, I now have a career, and like I always wanted to make other films, but after searching, it felt like the response to it was so strong that I wanted to prove to myself that like I could make a normal movie too. You know, that I could make a movie that was the opposite of searching, that wasn't complex, it was simple, that wasn't modern, it was timeless and classic, that wasn't just crazy, it was very kind of bare boned. And like, and I think like that's one of the biggest reasons that we came up came up with this story is that like I wanted it to hit those parameters without also being a massive step up in budget that I because I think that's a general mistake I see a lot of filmmakers make, which is like go from these super, super, super indie movies to like a massive movie, you kind of lose control.

So I wanted to like keep that while also like making the anti-searching in a way. And in that way, I think like searching and run are very much talking to each other, but just very different languages and tones. Um, because without searching, run wouldn't exist, uh, kind of a deal. So um it sort of satisfied all of that. And the way the idea came up, as you can probably imagine, we saw a headline one day, and it was this like, well, if you change one element of that headline and make it a secret that one character is holding from the other character, I think that's a Hitchcock movie, you know, and like that to us was like the the seat of it.

And like it hit, it was able to hit so many of those check marks or checkmarks so many of those points that we were trying to do, which is that opposite of searching that I thought, like, man, I if I could pull this off, just do something with two characters and one house and and and one camera and still make it compelling and thrilling and engaging, then like, okay, I can give myself permission to think a little bigger the third time around. So that was like it was almost like this experiment kind of a thing. Um uh and I've, you know, verdict's still out, but I I I hope people like it. Well, I certainly did.

I think it's funny that you say you wanted to make something uh less complex because I was kind of blown away, and we do spoilers on this podcast. So I was kind of blown away by how intricately everything was woven together from the beginning, and I especially loved how you used kind of the like Munchhausen um surprise air quotes because you kind of played that hand early, but then that was covering up a much bigger twist. And so I'm kind of wondering how you went about like weaving together a story that I perceived as complex, and I guess you perceive as simple. Right. Well, I what I mean, I mean, I you could imagine like just like the way that that movie was made compared to the way that searching was made, and like searching, you're looking at 19,000 different things in a single frame.

Here I'm telling you what to two things to look at, you know, kind of tail. So, like in that way, I think it's very different. I'm really glad that it came off of substantively, I guess, um, for you. But I mean, weaving that all together is I mean, so much of that is in the is in the writing, you know. Like um, you know, very funny uh twist, not very funny story about the twist was that like we actually didn't go into the movie knowing that that was gonna be the twist. Interesting. Um it was like one of those, and this is like talks about how like fluid movie making is in a lot of ways, but like in the spirit of making the anti-searching, it was like, okay, searching had a twist, it shouldn't have a twist.

You know, like that was it. Like, and then we started to realize like the more we should like work on this movie that like we basically set up this twist, you know, like with the opening scene very clearly. And in fact, not delivering on it would I feel like feel weird if if because I think like when you watch that opening scene, I've been talking to a few people who have seen it now. Like, it's just like you start to like any astute viewer starts to be like, uh, you know, like I think like okay, you know, kind of a thing. And like to not deliver on that, I think is there are half there are good unsurprises and then there are bad unsurprises.

And I think like that would have been a bad unsurprise for us to not deliver on that. So that that weaving process was really a negotiation while we were kind of like figuring out the story, but um, the rest of it fitting into piece was just sort of like writing it and asking our friends what they thought and and taking their advice. Awesome. That's really fascinating. And something that you kind of brushed on a moment ago is that both searching and run kind of revolve, well, they don't kind of they do revolve around parent-child relationships. And again, just this really like I was really drawn in by the idea that you don't know the person that you think you should be closest with.

So I'm just wondering like why that's a theme that you seem to be coming back to. I don't know. I mean, I think like everything from my high school films to my college shorts to my Google commercials to the short, you know, like to searching to run has always involved this parent and child dynamic from the eyes of a kid or the eyes of a parent or whatever, and it's always been very positive, uh, of a spin on it. And I think that's just because like you know, a bunch of backstory to my own life, you know, it's just like it that it I it feels true to me, and I feel like I can talk about that very naturally.

It's not something I try to force into anything, it just comes normally. Um, but the the doing the opposite felt appropriate when we were trying to do the opposite of searching. It just felt like why don't we just dip our toes into the dark side? Like, can you like you know, so much of our movies have been about the positive side of this parent love and how much that love, how how much of that love is a good thing. And that question was like, okay, is there a point though where like you can increase the amount of love enough where it stops being a hug and starts being a smother? And like just like what does that look like?

And I think like that started it was just a fun question to like ask, and you know, it like a mother-daughter or parent-kid relationship is just so much like there's so much ju pulp to be squeezed in in in in that way. And I think like a lot of uh slight tangent, but like so much of this pulp is really aided by the fact that like the people who are performing it are doing such a good job at grounding these characters, you know, that like the pulp goes down easy because you're just like these are people, not caricatures. And I think like uh they do a really, really good job at that. Uh and so of course now I've got to ask, what was it like working with Sarah Paulson and Kira Allen?

I even had I had a friend who was like, is this like camp movie? And I was like, the the uh performances are so big and physical, but like you said, they are grounded and real. So like, no, it's not camp, but it's still just like completely like roller coaster mind blowing. Yeah, thanks. I no, I appreciate that. Yeah, I think that was the goal is to make something that like did a lot of those things, but found a way to do it that felt still sort of like, okay, it makes sense in this moment, you know, like kind of a deal. So I mean, yeah, working with Sarah and working with Kira are like it was I'm working working with a queen who's been who's been like, you know, established and who's, I mean, in my opinion, top three actors working today, period.

You know, like if there's no anybody, even who watches Sarah Paulson for the first time, comes up being like, that's a really good actor. You know, like you can just see it. You know, it's so easy. And I was so lucky, and to be honest, a little shocked that someone of her caliber would even consider working with a you know, in some ways, a first-time live action filmmaker, um, uh coming off of searching. Um, and on the other end, you got Kira who's who's never been in a movie before, you know, and like it's so and and they're acting opposite each other in the same scene. So, like, so many of these moments where you're gonna go over to them and set and give them notes or whatever, there they it was it was like night and day, the types and the and and the length of time that I would spend with each one of them, you know, like Sarah, who like had soaked in the dude, Sarah just spits out fire after fire after fire.

I feel honored. I always say this, I feel honored to I sorry, don't say this enough. I feel honored to have been able to like bid in the edit and just watch the other takes that we didn't choose. You know, like every single take is so unique, and it's just like that didn't live because uh like there are some actors where you're trying to find the good take with Sarah's just trying to find like which take do we want to take the movie in? You know, like and it's there's those are different questions, and like that is champagne problem that Sarah gives us, you know, and like uh uh I'm really, really lucky to watch that and then watch Kira, who is like an unknown but absolutely just holds her own against her.

Um, I I'm very confident that people go in being like, This is a Sarah Paulson movie, and then come out being like, Who is who is she? Absolutely, I think so too. So, speaking about the their characters and actually the end of the movie, it ends with this kind of role reversal scene, this kind of kicker at the end. And so I'm just wondering what you want people to um walk away from, run kind of with the top of top of mind. I mean, it's funny because like this is one of those things that the meaning of that moment was a lot, lot more clear in like the earlier drafts of the film and the earlier cuts of the film when we explained a lot more about the mom's backstory.

And when we took away that mom's backstory, right now we have a like you can see in the moment where she takes a shower halfway through the film or whatever, you see all these scars on her back, you know. And I think like early in early cuts of the film, we used to explain all that stuff, and it had such a direct story, and there were other scenes at the top of the film that were talked about her own relationship with her mom. And what we learn over the course of the film is that she was lying about that, and this beautiful mother that she's painted herself is an evil, evil person, you know, and like by the end of the film, what we're saying is that we all just kind of become our parents, you know.

And I think like that was the hopefully that a little bit of that stayed, but like that was always the intention of this like we all kind of become each other, and like and hopefully now though, you know, Chloe's character was breaking the pattern because instead of passing it down, she's going right back up, and her own kid is is living a healthy life. So, like that cyclical nature of becoming up we become our own parents was sort of like one of the things that we wanted to touch upon. And I think it just got a little lighter through the through cutting the backstory, but hopefully in service of the of the larger movie. Definitely love that.

And I'm looking forward to that extended cut. So my last kind of uh group of questions is um first of all, are you a horror movie fan? Uh I I I uh thr when it's thrilling. Like to me, I can't do Exorcist, I can't do Conjuring, but I can do get out and I can do I can do Halloween, you know, like when the second, or even Halloween is that right at the edge, the second that it becomes supernatural, I can't handle. I can't handle it, you know. But like, but then when it's done so well, I love it. Like hereditary, you know, that felt like filmmaking, you know, and I think like I can handle that stuff.

But uh in general, I will watch, I'm the I'm the biggest thriller fan. And if you call Ron a horror movie, then I like those kinds of movies too. Well, that's what I was thinking is that Run is definitely dipping its toes much deeper into horror than searching dead. Um, and so that leads me into, of course, name of this podcast. I need to ask, what's your favorite scary movie? Okay, so I'm gonna I'll give you an answer, and I'm I would just wonder if it is uh appropriate. Well, actually, no, I think Rosemary's Baby is probably like, is that would you consider that scare or is that more? Definitely, no, that's a fabulous choice. Okay, yeah, Rosemary's Baby is my favorite.

I think Exorcist is pretty close, uh, close back there. But um, as far as like classics of all time, I think Rosemary's Baby. I think just the way that it gets into someone's head and then and then um uh slowly, slowly reels you in instead of just doing everything right at the top, uh, I think is is so not what modern movies do. Um and it's so it's so pleasant to to be able to watch. And then on a more modern standpoint, it isn't gonna surprise nobody. But get out is is the best horror movie, I think, uh like um top to the bottom um in the last you know five, ten years. Awesome. Well, those are incredible choices.

So A plus, you passed. Uh so then lastly, just what's next? What are you working on? What can we look forward to? Um well not, it's not a horror movie, unfortunately, but hopefully by that, maybe the the podcast is called uh favorite thriller or heist movie. But and we can do we can do it again. But no, um the uh the next film that I'm making is a is a heist movie. Um and it's uh it's like a heist thriller set in the backdrop of the immigration industry in America. And I and that is uh it's something that it's actually like the first idea I've ever come up with. Um uh when I was like 20 years old.

Um and like it was always too big for us, it's like too big for us to think about because like we were nobodies. And now it feels like okay, if we try writing it, maybe somebody would want to make it. So um, we're just gonna take a shot in the dark and see if anyone's interested. But um, yeah, that's it's still a while away, but I'm pretty excited. Awesome. Well, I'm really that sounds awesome. I'm really excited for that. So uh Anish, it's been such a pleasure getting to chat with you and congratulations again on Run. I think it's like top of 2020. So congrats. Thank you, Parker. I really appreciate it. Thank you for your time.

All right, wow. So that was my interview with Anish Shaganti, the right director and co-writer of Run. And man, did he have the Juicy Details. Now that we've heard from him, let's get into my own review of Hulu's Run. I was actually really excited to see this movie. I had seen it popping up on lists and on previews of the fall movies, and uh I couldn't wait. I mean, I feel like, you know, what we've gotten during the pandemic has not been limited. There have been plenty of things to watch. But that said, I haven't been particularly impressed with a lot of things, and my first thought about Run is that it finally Felt like I was watching a real movie.

It felt exciting and cinematic and like something that I would have been excited to see in theaters. Was grateful to watch in the comfort and safety of my own home. And I think a big part of that is these performances. Of course, we have to talk about it. Uh anytime Sarah Paulson is in something, I mean, count me in. I know that she gets uh a little criticism for being over the top, for being big and wild, but that's what I love about her. I actually think that this performance is one of the more down-to-earth that I have seen of hers lately. And although she is, yes, yelling and being physical and being wild too, I do think that there's enough empathy and enough groundedness, like Anish was saying, to her performances that, you know, I buy it.

I think this is a real woman who is going through something also real. And giving some serious hereditary I am your mother energy. I love that. And I think j uh, hats off to Kira Allen to be able to stand up against a performance like Sarah Paulson's as a first-timer on a feature film set and hold her own the way it does. I thought she was absolutely spectacular. I thought that the physical performance, just like I was thinking about Sarah Paulson's, was really effective. And knowing that she is a wheelchair user, the scenes where she does get up or where she crawls across the roof of the house are so visceral. And even in that scene where she's crawling across the roof, I felt like I could feel the shingles kind of rubbing her skin like sandpaper.

I thought that that was very exciting. And their chemistry together, I think, is really fabulous. You know, there is this kind of codependence between them and a strange love where I believe that they have something together that over the course of the movie they discover is not quite what they thought it was, but there's still kind of this obsession and devotion to each other that was palpable to me. You're not my real mother. Yes, yes, I am. I am. I'm your mom. Then who are they? No one They don't matter to us. You took me from it! I saved you from them. You know how many times I had to take you to the hospital. You poisoned me.

Protect you. I protected you. Also, as I mentioned in the interview, I think that the actual weaving of the story is really complex and lovely. I think that there's a lot of imagery that stands out. There's a moment in my brain where she gets on the phone with the stranger to ask him to Google the pill that she's been taking. And she asks, like, what's the color? What's the color? And before he answers, it flashes to a tomato. And in my brain, that was like, oh, he told her that it was a green pill, but it flashes to the red tomato, and then it comes back to him telling her that it's a red pill. I thought that things like that were really fun and clever.

And also, like I said again in the interview, I guess I'm just obsessed with this interview because I'm also obsessed with Anish Shaganti. But as I said, I thought that when I saw the ad for this movie as like another Munchausen by proxy movie. Um, I mean, slight spoilers for these things, but you know, we have the act, sharp objects, the politician. Like this story has been one that for some reason has been popular over the past few years, and people just keep making them. So it's kind of like, oh, we get it. But that's something that he knew, him and Sevo Hanian knew coming in that we would know. That's not something that they could hide.

That's something that, you know, the cards are played early on. And so instead they use that element as a disguise, as a red herring, for the bigger twist of the movie, which is that, you know, Diane's not her mother at all. And so then that brings up really interesting questions about like what is a mother-daughter relationship? Is that something that has to be created by blood? And I think that although theirs isn't, and their relationship is not one that I would want, I think that the movie is making an interesting commentary on being a mother does not necessarily mean giving birth to a child. Now, again, I think that the results of this particular relationship are less than desirable.

But I still think that compared to searching, that is an interesting direction to take a similar relationship nonetheless. And finally, my last thought, because I mean, I just there's not much for me to say. I was just tickled pink by this movie. I thought it was absolutely fabulous and really fun. Um, but I think that the the tension is really impressive. I I feel like I talk about this a lot, but there are just some movies that can't really grip you and have your heart racing like Run does. The sequence where she's getting out of the house and we know that Sarah Paulson is coming, or even as she's being wheeled through the hospital and she's trying to call out to um, you know, anyone, and she can't.

I thought that those moments like had really like reach out and grab it tension that I was just really gripped by. And I just I love it. Hats off to that, and also the claustrophobia of it all. I mean, I think that the movie makes a really beautiful point that Chloe's disability is not a hindrance on her, it's just part of who she is. But at the same time, that sets up a limitation for her that she can't just escape Diane, that she relies on Diane a little bit, which, like I was saying earlier about their chemistry as performers, that and the story itself creates a really fascinating reliance and uh relationship because they do need each other to some extent.

And of course, Chloe can then go to college and take care of herself, but until that moment, you know, all she knows is Diane, all she knows is her mother and being taken care of. And I think that that is a really beautiful and fascinating way to play with her disability because that's not the cause, it's merely an effect, near merely a flavor of that story, and I think that that's really cool. Now, entries into the book of most memorable murder are pretty slim in this movie. Not a lot of murder happening. So I'm going to adjust a little bit and ask, what's my most memorable moment from Run? And it's an easy peasy answer. I love the sequence when Chloe goes to the movies with Diane and she's got this whole scheme to visit her pharmacist to get the gossip on what she's been taking.

This is another moment where the tension is having me sweat, my heart beating on the edge of my seat. All of those cliche terms, I was doing them. And I thought it really showed how smart and resourceful Chloe is. This movie never makes her seem like she is not capable of taking care of herself, and she uses what she has to get there. And then there's also a lot of humor in this sequence where, you know, she's looking at the picture of the pharmacist for the game, she sneaks to the front of the line. I think that there are some really funny moments in this movie that don't take away from the thrilling moments of the movie.

And so my most memorable moment is when Diane comes in and she's hooting and hollering, getting to the front of the line, everybody give us some space or whatever. She screams, and then the camera has that jerk and it zooms out to show that Diane has, you know, injected uh Chloe with a tranquilizer. I thought that that was a really fun moment that put us into the POV of Chloe in a way that I wasn't anticipating or that I don't see too often. I loved that. What happened to you? Are you okay? What did you do? What did you say? She just started breathing like that. Chloe, look at me. You're gonna be okay. I spuck it on it.

Please! Will you please give us some space? Back off. It's gonna be okay. No. On a scary scale of one to five, you know, this this movie is not particularly scary. I think that it really finds the fun aspects of being a horror thriller. Um, it's exciting. So I'm going to rank it pretty low on the scary scale. I'm gonna give it a one or a two. Uh, let's give it a one and a half. Just cut it, cut this, cut through the middle. Um, and that's purely just because we're dealing with some slightly disturbing subject matter. There's a darkness to this movie. Uh, and yeah, it's it's an edge of the seat movie, but it's not, it's an it's not a jump and scream type movie.

There are creepy images, such as when Chloe is at the computer and there's that incredible um focus shift, and it shows Diane sitting at the dinner table down the hallway. I love that because she was there the whole time and we just didn't know it. That's kind of a stranger's moment that I was pretty obsessed with. Of course. Would I give Run a smash or a slash? Ladies, easy question. I'm giving Run a huge smash. I loved it. I thought it was so much fun. This has basically been a rave review from me because I really enjoyed Run and I look forward to watching it again. Now, the question we've all been waiting for. What's my favorite scary movie?

Oh. Girl. Christy, step aside. Run is my new favorite scary movie of season three. I, like I said, I'm excited to watch it again. I watched it quite a few times in the lead up to this interview and this episode, and I haven't had my fill. I'm ready to Thanksgiving dinner run and get seconds. So run, welcome to being my favorite scary movie. The water's warm. Jump on in, everyone. Alright, next time on What's Your Favorite Scary Movie? We are hitting up another new release. One that I've been so excited for, but that unfortunately decided that it had earned the right to my life by going straight to theaters, which it well, I haven't seen it, so I can't tell you.

But next week, Julianne and I will be reviewing Freaky, which is out on VOD Friday, Friday, December 4th. So make sure that you check out uh Freaky. I almost said run. Make sure you check out Freaky this weekend and look forward to a review from me and Julianne on that bad boy. I've heard great things, I'm really looking forward to it. While you're waiting for that fabulous episode, you can head on over to Apple Podcasts and leave us a rating and a review. That would be absolutely wonderful for getting the good word of what's your favorite scary movie to more earholes. My name is Parker Heron. You can find me on Instagram, Twitter, and Letterboxd Parker Del Rey.

You can find what's your favorite scary movie at patreon.com slash scary moviepod, where you can get some really rad bonus episodes every single month from me, Caroline, and Ian. You don't want to miss out on that. It's really worth it. We've had a lot of fun over there. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at Scarymovie Pod, and you can find our website where our calendar is held at scary moviepod dot com. You can also send us any feedback, requests, or just whatever you want at scary moviepod at gmail dot com. Until next week, goodbye.