Director – Michelle Schumacher, Screenplay – Carolyn Carpenter & Michelle Schumacher, Producer – Randle Schumacher, Photography – Pietro Villani, Music – Joe Simmons, Visual Effects – Redi Studios (Supervisor – Rick Redick), Production Design – Jordan Crockett. Production Company – Rubber Tree Productions.
Cast
J.K. Simmons (Wade Bennett), Isabelle Anaya (Miranda Cooper), Fernanda Urrejola (Jenny Cooper), Allen Leech (Eddie Cooper), Graham Patrick Martin (Deputy Dwyer), Andres Velez (Deputy Morgan), Olivia Simmons (Emily Cooper), Kevin Quinn (Todd)
Plot
In Grain Hills, Montana, Eddie Cooper is driving to the store with his teenage stepdaughter Miranda, when a man on a motorcycle that spoke to him earlier in a gas station bathroom, pulls up alongside and abruptly shoots Eddie. Miranda flees into the woods, pursued by the man. The man is Wade Bennett, a former business professor who abruptly snapped and went on a shooting spree. Despite suffering from crippling trauma, Miranda makes herself keep going. All the time, Wade pursues, while using Eddie’s phone to taunt Miranda’s mother Jenny, at home and nearing the term of her pregnancy.
The 2020-2 period saw a surprising upswing in films about people, usually women, being hunted through the woods by others and forced to survive with their wits and bare hands. This trend began with Alone (2020) and was followed by the likes of Hunted (2020), Prey (2021), The Retreat (2021), Death Hunt (2022), Hunt Club (2022), Hunting Ava Bravo (2022) and Unseen (2023).
You Can’t Run Forever was the third film for director Michelle Schumacher who had previously made the non-genre 3 Geezers! (2013) and I’m Not Here (2017). Schumacher has been married to the star of this film J.K. Simmons since 1996. Simmons is a high-profile actor known for tv series like Oz (1997-2003) and the various Law and Order series, while he has had a long career on film, perhaps best known on this site as J. Jonah Jameson in various of the Spider-Man films going back to Spider-Man (2002), along with a good number of other parts, including receiving multiple awards wins/nominations for Whiplash (2014).
You Can’t Run Forever is a family affair where Schumacher and Simmons also work alongside their daughter Olivia who plays the part of the blonde sister who is pushing the police deputies to do something and their son Joe who composes the music score, while Michelle’s younger brother Randle produces the film, as he has done for Michelle’s previous directorial outings.
J.K. Simmons goes huntingIsabelle Anaya fleeing for her life through the woods
You Can’t Run Forever treads familiar ground. The plot is essentially the same one that appears in Alone, albeit with the girl cast as being in her teens and much more focus on the killer’s background and the teen’s family in various locations alternately being taunted by the killer and trying to organise the rookie deputies to conduct a search for her. Unlike most of these other abovementioned entries, this means the story’s focus is less on Isabelle Anaya’s flight for life or the tension as she tries to evade her pursuer. Indeed, the film gives us very little in that department – largely due to its jumping between different plot strands and simply because Michelle Schumacher does nothing to create any dramatic survival scenes other than a couple of jumps where J.K. Simmons pops up behind Isabelle. The only real jumps we get are dream and drug-induced hallucination ones.
The main problem with You Can’t Run Forever is its casting of J.K. Simmons. Now, there’s nothing wrong with Simmons or his performance – in fact, it is nice to see him go psycho. On the other hand, he is the only recognisable face present, while the film is a vanity production made by he and his family. As a result, he becomes the character that is given the most depth in the film where Simmons rises to the occasion and lights up the show with his performance. Much of the film seems given over to him. He even gives video lectures where he explains his philosophy and flashbacks where we see what made him snap.
Simmons’ psycho is the only character that gets any depths, apart from a few mentions of Isabelle’s mental health issues and a dream sequence from her past. Seemingly as a result of this focus and the casting of an actor who fills the screen whenever he is around, the killer becomes the most interesting and engaging character in the film. All the rest of the characters fade into being one-dimensional, while crucially Isabelle Anaya is a nondescript wimp when she should be someone we are cheering on. It seems odd in a film where you should be feeling sympathy for a girl’s flight for her life, but where all your focus is instead on her pursuer who becomes the most lively character present.
