We Choose Violence: 'The Run' And The Rise Of Interactive Horror
- Jennifer Hensey
- 4 hours ago
- 4 min read
At Strand Film Festival’s Interactive Horror Night, audiences weren’t just watching, they were deciding who lived and who died, while slowly abandoning morality in favour of spectacle.
The opening night of Strand Film Festival defied all expectations of the average film screening. Rather than silence, commotion and cheering echoed through the lecture theatre, as audience members shouted “Spare” and “no, kill” over one another. Transcending their role as passive spectators, viewers became participants in the narrative itself, immersed in the plot and directly influencing its outcome.
At Interactive Horror Night, glow sticks were raised to cast collective votes on the protagonist's next move, replacing traditional cinema etiquette with energy, speculation and constant communication.
Orchestrated by a third-year Film student as part of the Film Festival module, the evening was hosted by Casey Chan and featured a Q&A with KCL alumnus Paul Raschid, director of The Run, which followed a screening of The Scarecrow. Introducing the concept, Raschid encouraged the audience to vocalise their reactions and vote by raising their glow sticks as each choice appeared on screen.
After revealing that there were twenty possible deaths, and that the protagonist would respawn at the previous checkpoint, he offered a warning that would define the evening: “Every choice matters – whether it matters in the moment or if it has an effect later on in the story. Think very carefully…”
Raschid described this mode of storytelling as a hybrid between film and gaming, noting both Until Dawn and Black Mirror as key influences. Planning becomes highly structured and intentional, as there is not the same flexibility as a traditional script – one change can collapse the entire narrative. Detailing his process, Raschid begins with a flowchart which becomes “like a massive tree with branching paths from scene to scene.”
During The Run, the audience were under the impression that the goal was simple: survive. Following fitness influencer Zanna as she fled brutal attacks from masked killers alongside the farmer Mateo in the Italian countryside, the stakes appeared immediate and physical. Initially, voting leaned towards safer, more cautious options, but as the narrative progressed, the audience began to slip into more reckless choices in search of spectacle. Reflecting on this, Raschid explained: “It’s interesting when people are in the audience, the choices they make and their mindset changes. At the beginning, people are trying to be nice, but eventually they start to take more chances, and pick the more chaotic, risky options for the sake of the plot.”
Key moments that demonstrated this tension between morality, justice and spectacle came when Zanna faced the masked killers, defeating them through correct tactical choices. Morality began to deteriorate over time in favour of survival and revenge, with the audience cheering violent victories and booing restraint. Time and again, they chose to finish off attackers rather than spare them, but was this justice, or a turn towards something unsettling?
Though each decision felt justified in the moment, the ending revealed they had been moral tests all along.
In an unexpected twist, it was revealed that Mateo and Zanna – through whom the audience had vicariously lived – had been dead from the moment they woke, trapped in a purgatorial test of virtue. Mateo ascended, as each of his choices demonstrated bravery, countering his sin of cowardice. Zanna, however, repeatedly acted out of selfishness, abandoning others and ultimately sealing her fate. The illusion of control masked a predetermined moral framework, forcing the audience into a moment of self-reflection as the credits rolled on their damnation.
Raschid’s earlier warning about the weight of each decision suddenly took on new meaning, as did the film’s persistent religious imagery and references to Catholicism. He explained that these narrative clues were designed to guide audiences towards choices that would “remedy the character’s sin”, noting that “a 50/50 choice is simply bad game design.” The audience believed they were shaping the story, only to discover they were being judged by it.
In an era of passive streaming, The Run offers a unique immersive experience built on suspense, communal spectatorship and speculation around cause and effect. Despite platforms like Netflix stepping back from interactive formats in early 2024, Raschid remains confident in its future, positioning it as a hybrid form that reaches both film and gaming demographics. As younger audiences grow increasingly accustomed to agency, through swiping, streaming and scrolling, interactive cinema poses a compelling question: do viewers want to simply watch stories, or to test themselves within them?
While Raschid acknowledges that interactive filmmaking can be both liberating and limiting, he ultimately argues that its future lies in the communal experience it creates. On this opening night, the true horror did not stem solely from what unfolded on screen, but from how quickly the audience abandoned morality in favour of spectacle when given the illusion of control.
Edited by Lara Walsh, Co-Film & TV Editor
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