One exhaustingly tired troupe from horror/thriller movies is that usually our heroine being stalked by the big bad slasher can simply run away from the monster after her, but often “something” flimsy happens that prevents them from just doing their best Usain Bolt impression and getting out of harm’s way. Sometimes that fall in the middle of the woods is laughably bad, but we just roll with it because that’s the fun part of slasher movies. However, directors Adam Schindler and Brian Netto’s latest film Don’t Move has the perfect antidote for that as our final girl simply can’t run away, which makes the film more effective and terrifying.
While it seems like just a regular day for Iris (Kelsey Asbille), she is going through extreme grief. She gets out of bed from what appears to be a sleepless night, and doesn’t even bother waking up her spouse as she drives out into a woodsy area. Turns out she and her husband lost their son who died after falling off a mountain during a family camping trip. It’s clear that Iris is in a very dark place as she sets to go to the same mountain as she looks over it as we the audience know she’s about to leap off and join her son in the hereafter. However, just as she is about to do the deed, she comes across hiker Richard (Finn Wittrock). Richard sees that there’s an issue and simply talks with Iris about her child and his own trauma, and soon enough, Iris decides not to take her own life and try and move towards the next stage of grief.
However, Richard isn’t some Lancelot who moonlights saving people from committing suicide. No, he has a much darker reason for wanting her to live (and also for her wanting herself to live). Before Iris can feel a trap being sprung for her, she’s knocked out and awakens in Richard’s car. Now the nice guy mask has been peeled off, and it turns out he’s a cold and calculating serial killer, and Iris is his next victim to be. While Iris may be stricken with grief and taken hostage, she’s not your typical damsel in distress. Using a pocketknife she keeps on her person, she manages to free herself from Richard’s zip ties and fights him in the middle of the car ride at high speed. In the aftermath of the crash, she manages to escape his clutches and starts to run away. Sounds good, right?
Unfortunately, in Don’t Move, Richard is a well-prepared serial killer. After he knocked Iris out with his stun gun, he injected her with a paralytic agent and screamed to her that she had 20 minutes before her body would completely shut down on her. At first, she’ll just have poor muscle coordination, then lose the ability to walk/run, then eventually the only motor function she will have will be control over her eyes in the form of blinking.
This is where Don’t Move gets intense. After listening to his instructions for the concoction he injected in her, she sets a 20-minute timer and tries to get the hell out of dodge. But soon enough, everything Richard says starts to come true. She’s unable to run, then unable to even walk, causing her to have a near-drowning when trying to escape. Although she briefly escapes Richard’s clutches, she now can’t walk, even move a little, and cannot speak. This proves to be very troubling for her when she befriends an old man who has a cabin in the woods (Moray Treadwell). How do you blink “I’m being stalked by a serial killer” to someone for help?
And it doesn’t help that Richard isn’t the usual dead-eyed antisocial serial killer like in most films. In Don’t Move, he’s charming as hell and can talk his way out of most situations. There are a few scenes throughout the film where he has her hostage, but can smooth talk suspicion that he has her hostage and she’s not his “alcoholic wife” that he’s taking care of. And his smooth talking proves trouble for whomever he’s lying to as they end up meeting their demise as they catch even a small whiff of his con.
Between Finn Wittrock’s charm to scary persona and Kelsey Asbille’s ability to act her ass off by just lying still in terror and communicating through her eyes, Don’t Move is an effective thriller. The sense of danger is always there throughout the film’s hour-and-a-half runtime. There are scenes where Iris gains the upper hand, and scenes where Richard has the upper hand which keeps the tension high throughout the film.
The only real minor gripe of the film is that it introduces characters that prove to be red herrings. One family gets ample screen time that the audience thinks will be important later on in the film (maybe help save Iris at the end?), only for whatever storyline that gets introduced is ignored and forgotten. There is a key component of Richard’s history and his double life that is almost choreographed to be a part of Don’t Move’s final act, but that also for some reason was either forgotten or left on the cutting room floor, which proves to be a little frustrating.
However, the performances from Asbille and Wittrock really drive the movie along with the direction of Schindler and Netto. The cinematography by Zach Kuperstein is also beautiful as most of Don’t Move takes place in a mountainous terrain of the Bulgarian woodlands. It proves to make the woods scary again as they are so vast and scary to be in alone. Although Don’t Move isn’t a supernatural film, it’s still a worthy watch during the Halloween season for a fun thriller that’ll keep you engaged all the way to the end.
Don’t Move is now playing on Netflix.
