The majority of reviews out now for noise band Boy Harsher‘s horror short The Runner question whether the 40 minute film could ever be considered true horror by anyone other than Boy Harsher’s fans. Well, if it doesn’t fall into the cult horror pantheon, it won’t be because of a lack of quality. Jae Matthews and Augustus Muller of Boy Harsher have built The Runner as a stripped down, atmospheric horror that digs into the raw beauty of violent cinema. It would be easy to argue that the simplicity and intentional vagueness of the narrative are due to the film’s existence as a tie in the Boy Harsher’s upcoming concept album of the same name, an extended music video if you will. And that may be the case, but the films decision not to over explain its story works. The short film sets up dual meta-narratives – the horror story itself alongside documentary style footage of Boy Harsher recording the album that works as the soundtrack to the film, as they comment on the horror narrative playing out on the others side. It recalls the Blair Witch Project‘s focus on the thin boundary between reality and fiction. Boy Harsher is simply creating the background noise to a larger tale and capturing the mood of this eery dystopia.
Like the best horror movies, The Runner doesn’t need a straightforward storyline, nor does it need an explanation to its violence and terror. Kris Esfandiari of King Woman‘s mysterious protagonist is possessed by monstrous desires and the creature she is running from may simply be herself and the terrible things she wants to do. She has a psychosexual encounter with another woman (played by FlucT’s Sigrid Lauren) and all the while the viewer’s gut twists with a primal survival instinct telling you something is about to go terribly wrong and to get out of there quick. There is no way to tell yourself that none of it is real and that it will all be ok because the Boy Harsher soundtrack has the impending doom vibes of Jaws and there is nothing about the film that doesn’t seem frighteningly realistic. There IS something dangerous in those woods, you CAN’T trust that stranger, something bad probably WILL happen. Maybe none of it will be as dramatized and gorgeous as this video and maybe not all at once but The Runner is terrifying the way It Follows is terrifying. Something bad is going to happen and it won’t happen quickly and you might have time to run from it, but it is stalking you all the same, and there is no outrunning that the danger of that haunting soundtrack.