Lifetime
Lifetime has developed and grown a large, mostly female following with its ‘Ripped from the Headlines’ movies, ‘true life’ biopics (the jury is out on how accurate many of them are when the people in question have no involvement) and seedy potboilers featuring someone hidden in an attic, garage or basement. Every now and then the network will get a little more highbrow and tackle a popular literary project, and that’s exactly what they have done with their newest thriller based on a novel by Terri Blackstock.
If I Run centers around Casey Cox, a young woman who discovers her good friend Brent, a local journalist who has been looking into police corruption, dead in his apartment. Casey panics and ends up covered in Brent’s blood, attempting to clean herself up while leaving fingerprints all over the crime scene before fleeing. Feeling certain Brent’s murder was tied to his investigation, Casey immediately flees her hometown. At the same time, a young military veteran with PTSD, Dylan Roberts, returns to town. He was friends with Brent in high school and the police chief is aware of how tight that group of people were so he asks Brent to do some investigating, specifically to find Casey and bring her back to town. Dylan begins tracking her and spots her at the bus station, but she manages to hop on a different bus just as it pulls away, her destination now unknown. The bus makes a stop in Oklahoma where Casey connects with an old friend, someone she had helped during her time as a social worker, someone who she knows can get her a fake ID. He is reluctant to help as he’s out of that game, but sensing Casey is in real danger he gets her what she needs and she’s on her way again. On the second leg of her trip, her seatmate is a woman named Lucy, who came to Oklahoma to help her daughter move from Atlanta following the disappearance of her granddaughter. Lucy’s daughter could not handle being around all of those memories and needed to start fresh, but even after two years Lucy still has faith that her granddaughter Laura will come home (she was listed as a runaway but Lucy never believed that). She also offers Casey, now going by Grace, a place to stay if she needs it. Lucy lives in a small town outside of Atlanta called Shady Grove. She is thrilled when her friend ‘Grace’ shows up and welcomes her with open arms. Casey has also made plans to keep in touch with her sister Hannah through the use of burner phones, but it isn’t long before Dylan picks up her trail again, questioning Hannah and assuring her that he’s just trying to help Casey. He also learns more about why Casey felt she had to run due to her distrust of the police, who had classified the death of her father a suicide when she was a young girl. Casey had found her father, but she clearly saw there were signs of a struggle and she’s been trying to solve the mystery of her father’s death ever since, which is what also tied her to Brent.
Dylan continues to search for Casey, finally tracking her to the Atlanta area, always pressured by police captain Gordon Keegan and officer Sy Rollins to bring Casey back, adamant that she is guilty of Brent’s murder — completely ignoring the usual innocent until proven guilty adage. Dylan never seems to question why they believe she is guilty other than seeing her leave the apartment on security footage, apparently not bothering to look at the footage prior to the murder (or at least nit sharing that with Dylan) to see if anyone else entered or left the building. In Shady Grove, Casey has gotten a job at a local electronics repair shop, hoping that they will be able to unlock the flash drive she took from Brent’s apartment, hiddne inside the lid of a cookie jar, praying that it will have pertinent information to prove her innocence. There she also meets Arelle Dotson, but she has a weird vibe from her (she has a habit of dropping and breaking her phone because, according to shop owner Stan, she and her husband Frank spend their nights at a local bar). Casey decides to pay a visit to the Dotson’s home and while there is no answer at the door, she hears a baby crying. Casey asks Stan if the Dotsons have a baby, but if they did they certainly wouldn’t leave it home alone. Casey begins to become more suspicious after Frank pays a visit to the shop to have a few stern words with her to keep away from his property, but she goes back after they head to the bar and discovers Laura is locked in the basement. Casey is arrested but bailed out by Lucy, and when Lucy goes to the Dotsons she finds no trace of her granddaughter and the trauma of thinking Laura was coming home was too much for her and she asks Casey to find a new place to live because she’s going to move to Oklahoma with her daughter. But Casey seems to have found an ally in Dylan, who begins to get suspicious of his commanding officer. Will the two be able to work together to solve Brent’s murder and free Laura from her captors before Casey is captured?
Lifetime
Lifetime’s production of If I Run is top notch with a tight screenplay that lays out Casey’s story, giving us just enough information about the central mystery as the story moves on to assume that she is indeed correct about her father’s death and that Captain Keegan and Detective Rollins know a lot more about it than they are letting on (which also explains their odd ‘Casey is guilty, no question’ stance — they want to shut her up). If there’s any weak part of the story it’s that it takes Dylan way too long to catch on to their odd behavior, but it also gives him time to get more information about Casey’s background that helps him question the guilt the police have put on her (of course, this could also be inherent in the source material). Director Michael M. Scott does a great job of telling this expansive story, elevating it above the usual TV movie standards, giving it a more cinematic feel than most Lifetime movies.
A lot of credit for that can also go to the casting with some pretty big names among the main players. At the top of the list is Kat Graham, who developed a large fan base from her time on The Vampire Diaries. Graham makes Casey’s situation completely believable and through her performance gets the audience to become invested in her quest to find not only Brent’s killer but her father’s as well. Casey is a very sympathetic character, a selfless character based on what people tell Dylan, and as this is part of Lifetime’s series of faith-based films that have been airing, perhaps she is actually an angel put on this earth to help others (even though she has a hard time accepting there is a God who would allow such terrible things to happen to good people). Graham just makes Casey someone you want to root for, and without a powerhouse performance like that the movie would flounder. Also doing good work is Evan Roderick (who was seen the same night at the same time over on the Hallmark Channel in another first of three movies) as Dylan. He seems to be a total idealist, always looking for the good in people, seemingly very honest in his words to Hannah that he wants to help Casey, doing his best to manage his PTSD from a traumatic, tragic experience that killed everyone in his platoon but him, making him question why just him? Perhaps he, like Casey, has a greater purpose and it seems like that will be exposing the corruption at the police department. Roderick’s Dylan is just terribly likable, which is important to not alienate the audience that is rooting for Casey. For the story to really work, Dylan has to eventually see the light and believe in Casey, and Roderick does just that with his skillful performance, while also garnering sympathy for his condition.
The movie is filled with a wonderful supporting cast including Ecstasia Sanders as Hannah, who has to wrestle with the decision to trust in Dylan enough to tell him where Casey is; Frances Flanagan as Lucy, who becomes a good friend to Casey but loses a few points when she immediately turns on her after failing to discover Laura locked away in the Dotsons’ basement (and it’s never clear if she or the police checked the basement and why with all the commotion at the house did the baby not cry); James Tupper is a bit awkwardly stiff as Keegan, pretty much screaming to the audience ‘I ordered the hit on Brent and Casey’s dad’, while Zak Santiago’s Rollins is nothing but pent up rage, also telegraphing loudly ‘I killed Brent and Casey’s dad’ (their obvious complicity in the crimes is one of those egregious things that often happen in movies like this where the director/actors feel the audience needs to be aware of such guilt while pretending the other characters can’t see it). Kayla Deorkson makes a memorable impression as Arelle Dotson, especially in the final scene, and Benjamin Wilkinson is nicely sleazy and threatening while able to also put on a happy face with the police. One thing the movie does well with the Laura story is that it never explicitly reveals why she’s locked in the basement or how she ended up with a baby, but Arelle’s final line says it all.
If I Run is a terrifically and skillfully produced and acted movie with a stellar cast, but Casey’s story and the revelations about Brent’s and her father’s deaths do not end here as Lifetime promises before the credits roll that there is more to come in 2026. Thankfully If I Run is so good that it leaves you wanting more.
If I Run has a run time of 1 hour 28 minutes, and is rated TV-14.