South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival – Director/co-writer Tristan Kim’s short film Run That Shit! is quite a trip…to the chamber pot. A dark comedy centered around one night of theft, poop, and murder, Run That Shit! is making its Texas premiere at SXSW Online 2021 within the “Midnight Shorts” category.

Run That Shit! follows a struggling rapper named Rolly (Jerome Beazer), having an unsuccessful night of passing out mixtapes. After reluctantly calling an old boss for a quick job to do for some money, Rolly is asked to use his connection with a popular rapper in order to get close enough to him to steal his chamber pot. After going through with the sordid plan, Rolly has to choose between shitting or getting off the pot and be taken away.

I don’t believe I have liked a character right off of the bat so very much than I did in watching Run That Shit! I took to Jerome Beazer’s performance as Rolly immediately, his relatable, down-on-his-luck, in-over-his-head character suited his comedic timing perfectly. It might be impossible for any other human to keep a straight face throughout the literal shit that his character has to deal with throughout the bonkers, WTF shenanigans of Run That Shit!

I want to believe, with a character called Big Tobacco who is rich but never shown actually smoking any tobacco, that somewhere in this surreal movie is a clever commentary that keeps it real in regards to big tobacco, but I am not quite sure how serious I should take this film. Either way, there are some hard moral lessons to be learned about making deals with devils, as well as some softcore level poop-play thrown in for good measure.

By the end of Run That Shit! I had no idea whether I should be laughing, crying, or feel utterly disgusted — a good sign from a film, especially one that is basically a 14-minute long poop joke. But the film may be trying to say something about tobacco, or drugs, or the general dog-eat-dog nature of the music business deep down, so it may not just be all shits and giggles. With great, chill moody hip-hop music fueling the energy and a film that just looks great as far as cinematography and direction, Run That Shit! is full of shit and magic and is definitely worth a watch during SXSW.

Run That Shit! reviewed as part of our South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival coverage.

7 out of 10