I might disagree with Thunder Bow slightly and say that this dream could be about your internal dynamics as well as (or instead of) your outer life. It could be either - it's hard to tell with dreams. You have to sit with them and listen to your heart.

IF it's about your inner dynamics, then what it means is that you have many parts to you, like all people, and these parts or aspects to your personality can be represented by different people in the dream.

Going against the flow of the other people could mean that you are not listening very well to your inner dynamics and trying to force something that goes against your intuition. The reason I think this is that when this scary man appears, your first thought is that you can't help him. Perhaps, though, he is an aspect of your who is asking for recognition and help. It is when you starting running that he pulls out the butcher's knife.

So something to wonder about is whether if you had stopped to help him and listen to him, he wouldn't have gotten threatening.

I could be completely wrong here and I usually trust Thunder Bow's intuition, so just throwing this theory out there.