Run (2020)

Run (2020) Director: Aneesh Chaganty (Scene: 00:38:34 - 00:49:45)

Run (2020), the follow-up film from the creative team behind Searching (2018), puts architecture front and center. Searching was inventive in its use of space because of the fact that the film takes place entirely on computer screens and mobile devices. Run takes place primarily in a single location, making “home” a space for its character to navigate. Interiors spoke with writer and director Aneesh Chaganty, writer and producer Sev Ohanian, and producer Natalie Qasabian about the use of architecture and space in their latest film.

Chaganty says he never saw himself going from a film like Searching, with a modestly sized budget, to a film with a massive budget; rather, he wanted the scope of his films to get incrementally larger. This pushed him to make a film that was slightly larger in scope, a contained thriller with two characters at its center. Run, which its director pitches as “Misery (1990) with a mom and a daughter,” centers on Diane (Sarah Paulson), a mother who has raised her daughter Chloe (Kiera Allen) in total isolation.

Chloe, like her real-life counterpart, is disabled. Kiera Allen is the first wheelchair user to star in a major thriller since Susan Peters in 1948’s The Sign of the Ram. Chloe, as a result, relies heavily on her mother and is limited in terms of ability. The fact that the lead character uses a wheelchair meant the filmmakers could use this seemingly normal house setting and make all the obstacles into “Mission Impossible stakes” for its lead character. In this sense, everyday household tasks become things to overcome: getting prescription medicine from the top shelf of a medicine cabinet seems like an afterthought, but for someone in a wheelchair like Chloe, it suddenly becomes an obstacle. It’s out of reach for a reason.

Their residence becomes the setting to explore their relationship, and what starts out as an idyllic home quickly becomes a prison for its lead character. “The decision to set [the film] in a house came after the decision to make it contained,” says Chaganty. The film was shot in Winnipeg, Canada in the winter of 2018. The obvious influence comes in the form of Alfred Hitchcock films, “not only for their contained space, but also for how iconic some of their homes are,” says Chaganty. The home, which has traditional architectural elements, was initially chosen because of its distinct look. Chaganty states, “One of the first things that struck us about the house that we ended up choosing was just how much it felt like that could just be a poster where you draw that house out and it looks like something sinister is happening inside of it, or something could be.”

It’s also important to think about the home from a character perspective. The home is secluded with no neighbors in close proximity. It’s also a two-story house, which doesn’t properly accommodate someone in a wheelchair. Qasabian stresses that these decisions were deliberate on the part of the mother. “[Diane] had a child that was disabled and she chose this house to live in. She was trying to trap Chloe from day one. The house is not designed for someone with that disability. It’s not practical.” In addition, the basement, unlike the first and second floors, does not have wheelchair access. The basement is initially depicted as a private space for Diane: she unwinds with a glass of wine and watches home videos of Chloe. We later learn this decision to keep this private space out of access for Chloe was intentional. This dungeon-like space is where Diane imprisons her.

The filmmakers utilized the exterior of the house and its first floor on location in Winnipeg, but built the second floor on a stage. In this sense, the second floor was entirely the filmmaker’s imagination of what could fit within the parameters of the house. The window and walls, for instance, match the on-location exterior of the home, but it was a deliberate decision on the part of the filmmakers to have Chloe’s room overlook the driveway. This was done so that Chloe could have an eye on the front of the driveway where she would be able to see if her mother’s car was there or not. The director points out that what they admired most about the interior of the home was its angles. “You put a camera in one spot and it was impossible to not see another room.” This use of dynamic space is explored in a key scene when Chloe sneaks downstairs in the middle of the night to use the computer. Chloe’s face covers half the frame, and as she realizes the internet has been disconnected, she sits back in her chair, as we see Diane sitting in darkness in the kitchen. This speaks to how controlling Diane is of Chloe, as she observes her every move, but also true to the space of the house itself. “It was a no-brainer that mom is sitting over there. It doesn’t feel forced, it’s just what’s happening in that normal space.”

Run is also a case where its filmmaker uses space to push the story forward emotionally. Qasabian emphasizes that Chaganty meticulously storyboarded every frame of the film. “We were making a movie where every frame, every shot was intentional.” Searching highlighted Chaganty’s ability as a storyteller, but he gets more bandwidth with Run to explore shot compositions. Ohanian says, “Aneesh has this uncanny superpower to really understand how to move the camera to elicit emotions, suspense, tension, and that was something that he was not able to do to its proper extent [in Searching], because that movie doesn’t have traditional camerawork or shot composition.”

This is highlighted in the scene after Chloe discovers her mother’s name on her medication. We first hear Diane in voiceover saying, “You’ve figured it out,” as we cut to Chloe sitting in bed and reading a book. The book covers up the majority of the frame, then moves down, revealing Diane at the door. The camera pans to the right where we see Chloe’s project that she has been working on, then back over to Diane as she walks to Chloe’s bedside. The camera then turns onto Chloe as she spits the pill out of her mouth and holds it in her hand. The movement of the camera and the staging of the actors in this sequence highlights Chaganty’s ability to elicit tension and emotion. Chaganty’s craft as a filmmaker is also demonstrated in another scene when Chloe is on the phone in her mother’s bedroom. Chloe uses a landline phone to find out the truth about her medication, going back and forth from the desk where the phone sits to the window that overlooks the garden where her mother is. This back and forth continues to build tension. In addition, she uses a corded landline phone. Chloe is effectively tethered—a recurring theme of the film.

The centerpiece scene of the film, which we diagrammed in detail, comes at the 38:34-minute mark. In an episode of “Anatomy of a Scene” from The New York Times, Chaganty stresses that in terms of form, this is one of the few sequences in the film that “breaks the pattern of the film’s aesthetic.” Run borrows its style from filmmakers like M. Night Shyamalan, where in any given shot, the frame is designed in such a way where a number of things can happen. In this sequence, however, we are presented with a clear mission: Chloe is locked in her room and must escape her home/prison.

In our diagram, we depict moments where she faces an obstacle and how these obstacles are more intense because they are connected to her disability and health. Chloe uses pure intelligence to devise a plan to escape, one that is based on her disability. In other words, a solution an able-bodied person would have come up with wouldn’t work for her. This 11-minute sequence begins with Chloe waking up and discovering that she is trapped inside her room. Chloe, realizing her predicament, scans her room. The camera sits behind her as we examine the space of her room. The camera holds on her window as she climbs out of her bedroom window to the side roof. We pan to the left of the exterior of the house to see her mother’s bedroom window. This becomes the obstacle at hand for her: she must get from her room to her mother’s room to then escape. Chloe is tactical in her approach: she checks her sugar level, quickly scarfs down food to give her blood sugar a boost, grabs a soldering iron, and takes a gulp of water—holding the water in.

This sequence stitches together various shots from various days of filming. The initial portion of the stunt, with Kiera Allen dragging herself on the roof, was shot on the first day of filming, with the remainder of the sequence being completed on the last day of filming. This was because of weather in Winnipeg, where the filmmakers filmed exteriors first before it started snowing, then moved indoors.

We first see a wide shot of the house as Chloe climbs out of her bedroom window. In this shot, the actor is actually on a stage where the roof is flat, but the wall is tilted to the side. We then see her crawl from one side of the house to the other as the camera pulls back. This shot consists of a stunt double with face replacement technology. Chloe then approaches her mother’s window, heats up the soldering iron and puts it on the glass, and spits out the water that she has been storing in her mouth. The cold impact from the water immediately shatters the glass. Chloe relies on her engineering skills that we see early on in the film to achieve this, despite her disability.

Chloe makes her way into her mother’s bedroom, but as she rests on the floor, she discovers that she is short on breath and doesn’t have her inhaler. Chloe’s plan is thwarted as she pushes on, crawling from her mother’s room back into her own room, back to where she started. Chloe grabs her inhaler from her nightstand, takes a breath, and finally exits her room. Chloe discovers that the platform lift has been disconnected by her mother. This highlights the fact that Diane has thought about the possibility of Chloe being able to escape her room. Chloe pushes her wheelchair over the lift, followed by herself, as she finally lays on the ground floor. This is when Chloe realizes, for the first time, that she is regaining movement in her feet. This realization pushes her to get back on her wheelchair as she heads to the door and finally escapes.

Ohanian makes another Mission Impossible reference, sharing that the Burj Khalifa scene from Mission Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011) served as inspiration for the filmmakers for how Chloe would navigate through the space of her home. In both sequences, characters use architecture, space, and movement to navigate under extraordinary circumstances. Ohanian poses a question that the filmmakers asked themselves early on: “Can we make a really domestic house into an inescapable prison? [We wanted to] make the geography the obstacle itself.”

Run is a film that effectively highlights how a disabled character navigates a home that has become a prison for her, both physically and mentally, where everyday objects become obstacles. It’s a film that presents a unique conversation about architecture in relation to a character’s disability.

Aneesh Chaganty is a writer and director whose films include Searching (2018) and Run (2020). Sev Ohanian is a writer and producer whose films include Fruitvale Station (2013), Searching (2018), Run (2020), and the upcoming films Judas and the Black Messiah (2021) and Space Jam: A New Legacy (2021). Natalie Qasabian is a producer whose films include Searching (2018), Duck Butter (2018), All About Nina (2018), and Run (2020).

© 2020 Interiors (Mehruss Jon Ahi and Armen Karaoghlanian)