Late Runner | a heightened experience of darkness in the city

Late Runner reveals a night-time neverland that drips with danger. It’s a heightened, sleep-deprived, almost surreal world on a tightrope of terror, where one misstep can see you descend into the murky abyss. And the ambitious thriller has found a home on the Amazon streaming service.

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Late Runner - Official Film Trailer

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Oh, yes, and it was shot in Plymouth by a bunch of creatives who connected and built something together, with that sense of growing achievement via a story that gnaws at hope.

In Late Runner, sleepless loner Robert Kowalski is a delivery driver as he saves up for an escape from the violent city. The city itself steps beyond the twilight to become a timeless anywhere metropolis of low lights, shadows and darkness.

“If you don’t state that it is Plymouth, it makes it timeless,” writer-director Patryk Leo tells D&CFilm. It also helps to not put a label on a specific city in a story which is full of violence and gore.

But it did grow out of Patryk’s experience of a shared house in the city which he ended up in after graduating.

Violence, aggression, negativity

“I was literally living with the drug dealer in the house. And, every night, I would hear some woman screaming. It was in the distance, but I could hear the roughness of the area. And I think that contributed to where my life was at that moment, and it contributed overall to the story and the environment, the violence, the aggression, the negativity.”

Late Runner is definitely a heightened experience.

“It has to be heightened. Otherwise it will be boring,” says Patryk.

Added to that, and the other-worldly lure, is the artistic imagery of DP Andy Carr.

The city and night-time shoots

“I was learning on the spot,” says Andy of the days of driving around the city and night-time shoots. “It was generally one setting, and trying to get as interesting shots as I could. I wanted to use more movement, but that was difficult because of budgetary and time constraints. You have to block things properly – that takes a lot of coordination. And when you’ve been working all day and you’re filming until midnight, and you’ve got people that need to go home, it’s kind of restricted to trying to get the best compositions I could.”

A Gothic horror atmosphere is translated on screen

There’s a sense of the high contrasts and the atmosphere of Gothic horror translated to the screen.

Filming began in September 2022, with the final reshoot taking place in March 2024. “We shot the movie while working full-time jobs. And it takes, takes days, sometimes weeks just to prepare one scene.”

For example, Andy would finish work at 6pm, be on set at 7pm and film until midnight, with some of the bigger scenes taking days to complete.

The cast is made up of recent graduates or third-year students, with Kevin Johnson as the biggest professional actor in the film, who gets a casting credit because of the actors he brought to the movie.

Creative, challenging vibe

The shoot created such a centred, creative, challenging vibe that friendships were formed and it felt like recapturing that vitality.

“I was missing uni at the time, it just felt like we were back in that kind of environment again with cool people,” says Andy.

“The story comes from my fascination with thrillers,” says Patryk, and particularly Taxi Driver. “What I really like about Taxi Driver is that the character is isolated. Travis Bickle is an obscure character. He’s struggling like everyone else. I felt I wanted to create something like that: a character who’s a regular guy, who’s being surrounded by the chaos. And the story would take him from being detached and slowly being sucked into the chaos and becoming a product of the chaos. The thing that he’s against.”

Along with the situation Patryk found himself in.

“It comes from me,” he says. “I was miserable at the time myself. I was struggling. Covid and isolation really helped the idea to flourish. I said to Andy in 2022, let’s make the movie. I know we can make it. And I delivered on that promise.”

And working through all of that with hiccups, delays, obstacles and long nights is something that now, especially as it has been picked up by Amazon, is something they can revel in.

Momentum

“I didn’t deal with Covid very well,” says Andy, whose grad project was jettisoned in the lockdown. “There was a massive slump. And then Patryk comes to me with ‘let’s do a feature film’, it just brought that momentum back. Along with that, it had collaborating with other people, similar to the sort of uni experience, and belief in what you’re doing, and hanging out with people in that environment and with that purpose again.”

Of course, it wasn’t plain sailing, and there were dark times, even in the weeks before the streaming release.

“We had moments when we doubted ourselves. We had moments when we thought: we’re not going to make it. Things get hard and your brain is trying to poison you with negativity,” says Patryk.

It’s all been a massive learning curve, but it has reinforced one thing for Patryk.

“One thing that I really learned is to trust myself,” he says.

For Andy, the confidence thing has definitely gone up. “I think the issue I’ve got in general is I’ve never found one discipline to focus on. The people I’ve known who’ve gone on to have a career in the industry had their niche: they were either a cinematographer or a writer and they were very much focused on that.”

But Andy delves into all aspects of filmmaking. He even did the make-up on Late Runner.

“I could ever stop making films again”

“It’s made me happy, being a bit of a jack of all trades. I don’t think I could ever stop making films again, I just enjoy the process,” he says.

Patryk says: “For me filmmaking is a therapy. If I wasn’t writing my thoughts down and how I feel, I think I would go nuts. Writing and filmmaking is really having my voice in this world.”

Late Runner delves into a murky midnight world

Neither have money to back them up, and over the years, the spending crept up to the £10,000 mark. But what they’ve also learned is how to make the most of a tight budget.

Patryk is looking to obtain bigger budget for his next feature project, which he is preparing.

Meanwhile, Andy is aiming for modest future projects. “I want to do more short films. And my partner Maria wrote a folk horror script, which I think I can make into a stop motion film combined with live action.”

An obscure cinematic endeavour

Patryk calls Late Runner an obscure cinematic endeavour. For Andy, there’s one word that carries so much weight for creative, guerrilla, shoe-string filmmakers that combine dark times with camaraderie.

“It was fun,” he says.

Watch Late Runner on Amazon Prime