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Runt, which stars Cameron Boyce, is a cautionary tale about what can happen when teenagers don’t have good influences and positive role models.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for William Coakley’s Runt, available to rent or buy now on Prime Video and VUDU.
It’s been over two years since Cameron Boyce’s tragic death from an epileptic seizure. Only twenty years old when he passed, Boyce had a heart for people and particularly wanted to help reduce violence and negativity in the world. Runt — his final film — was just released, and it goes a long way toward his goals by aiming to combat teen bullying. A cautionary tale, Runt shows what can easily go wrong when young people don’t have the right influences and the proper outlets.
In the film, Boyce plays a high schooler named Calvin. He’s a talented young artist, but he’s isolated and unsupervised. When he tries to catch the eye of the star quarterback Vic’s girlfriend, he draws the ire of the football jocks and his life spirals into violence.
The jocks beat Cal up once for not helping them cheat on a test. Later, they cut his bike chain and he is fired for being late for work. So, he firebombs Vic’s sports car. For that, he gets beaten up again, but in the process, he breaks Vic’s finger, ruining his chance at a sports scholarship. Enraged, Vic goes to give Cal a beating like he’s never felt before, but instead, he ends up doing something even worse. He kills Cal’s dog, Runt.
After finding Runt dead in a trashcan, Cal develops a plan to ruin the jocks’ lives. While they’re playing a football game, Cal – who is starting to go off the rails at this point – sneaks into the locker room and switches out the bullies’ drugs with the cleaning agent AJAX. So, when they snort it during halftime, they have to be rushed to the hospital. Then Cal confronts Vic, who didn’t take the drugs, and tells him what he did. Vic tries to chase him down, but Cal has a baseball bat waiting and proceeds to beat him. One of Cal’s friends shows up with a gun to break up the fight, but Cal takes the gun and nearly kills Vic in revenge. Cal is only stopped when his girlfriend arrives to talk him down. After a few more blows with the bat, Cal and his girl walk off together into the homecoming dance.
Although a little exaggerated at times, Runt feels authentic and lived-in. The point is that, without good influences, parental guidance and positive outlets, bad choices are easy to make, and that’s exactly what happens in the film. A few characters actually say outright that sometimes, “two wrongs make things right.” Cal and Vic keep trying to one-up each other to the point where the other is so emotionally and physically broken that they cannot fight back. They can’t see a way to end the cycle, so they keep escalating until violence is the only answer and people’s lives are ruined.
After the film, a title card sums up the whole message of Runt, entrenching it as a cautionary tale. It says:
Cameron Boyce believed strongly in the power of kindness and the use of creative arts to reduce violence and negativity. He also understood that this film highlights what can happen if young people do not have positive outlets. Cameron had hoped to be able to use what he learned from playing Cal to start conversations about tolerance and positivity.
Starring Cameron Boyce, Runt is available to rent or buy now on Prime Video and VUDU.
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