Shana Feste added every woman’s nightmare to the Midnight section of the Sundance Film Festival in the form of “Run Sweetheart Run,” her newest horror film starring Ella Balinska and Pilou Asbaek.
The film, which will be released by Universal later this year, stars Balinska as Shari, a single mother who decides to re-enter the dating scene. Asbaek plays Ethan, a man who seems to be charismatic and charming when he meets Shari for a date but soon reveals his sinister nature. Desperate to escape, Shari runs out onto the streets of Los Angeles after dark and soon discovers that Ethan is not only dangerous but well-connected, too.
“It was based on a bad date that I went on when I was attending UCLA,” Feste told TheWrap’s Steve Pond. “I literally — without a purse, shoes, cellphone — just ran home from Hollywood Hills to West Los Angeles. I think every woman could relate to something like that because every woman has their own real-life horror film.”
Feste’s personal story, one she said she wrote for her daughter from a “very angry place,” resonated deeply with Balinska when she read it while working on another film. She said she gravitated immediately to the film.
“There’s nothing in the script that’s like, ‘Oh, she has to make these decisions, otherwise it’s not a horror movie,” she said. “She’s intelligent. She does things that even I as a human being thought, ‘Wow, that makes so much sense!’”
Watch Feste, Balinska and Asbaek talk more about “Run Sweetheart Run” in the clip above.