Movie Review – Don’t Move (2024)
Principal Cast : Kelsey Asbille, Finn Wittrock, Moray Treadwell, Daniel Francis.
Synopsis: A seasoned killer injects a grieving woman with a paralytic agent. She must run, fight and hide before her body shuts down.
********
I will admit to a little frustration with Don’t Move, the latest l0w-budget thriller sluiced onto Netflix’ eternal roundabout of content without so much as an iota of publicity. On the one hand, it’s an exquisitely simple and effective premise – a kidnapped woman is injected with a drug that slowly immobilises her, affecting her while she’s trying desperately to escape – that ought to wring a white-knuckled sense of terror in this cynical, #MeToo age. On the other, the film flounders with an overt sense of convenience, both in character development and plot mechanics, offering both an isolating and intimate viewing experience in alternate amounts. The downbeat tone of the film’s opening, and a persistent suffocating absence of hope make the film’s early going tough to contend with, although not through the small cast’s lack of effort; rather, the psychological aspect of both the lead characters’ arcs isn’t sufficiently strong enough to warrant more than a cursory investment by the viewer.
When grieving mother Iris (Kelsey Asbille – Wind River) attempts to commit suicide at the isolated park location of her young son’s untimely accidental death, she is talked off the edge of a cliff by an apparent good Samaritan, Richard (Finn Wittrock – La La Land, The Big Short). Initially wary of him, before softening to the man’s own melancholy tale of loss, Iris rethinks her suicide and returns to her vehicle, where the plans to return home. However, Richard physically restrains her, kidnapping her in the back of his car with plans to spend the weekend at his cabin assaulting her, before killing her himself. After a desperate escape attempt, Richard reveals that he has injected Iris with a drug that will paralyse her over the course of some twenty minutes; as Iris flees, her body begins to shut down until she is rendered motionless other than the ability to move her eyelids. A stranger (Moray Treadwell) attempts to help, but when Richard catches up with them, things take an even deadlier turn.
Written by TJ Cimfel and David White, Don’t Move tries to combine both a survivalist body-horror thriller with themes of suicide and death, and while earnestly produced and quite well directed by Adam Schindler and Brian Netto, the end result is a film that feels too lost among the weeds emotionally to contend with elevating the intended thrills. I go back to exploitation films like John Hyams’ 2020 film Alone (which, incidentally, features a very similar story beats) and even Ryan Reynolds’ Buried as examples of character powerlessness at play, as the plot involves removing Iris’ agency by leaving her physically defenceless from any attack, and the underlying tension of this is quite redolent of modern feminist struggles. The way the film sets up Iris’ suicidal tendencies is nuanced and subtle, despite not quite resonating with the emotional arc intended by the rest of the film – the climax of the film pays its own homage to this catharsis but for me it didn’t work in and of itself, whereas had it been a straight up revenge twist (like I Spit On Your Grave, for example) I might have felt something deeper. I get what the filmmakers were aiming at, I just felt the lack of emotional intrigue wasn’t compelling enough to carry itself through the whole movie.
The acting performances are a little bit all over the place, particularly from Finn Wittrock as the deranged psychopath intent on tormenting Iris, who flips between swarthy hunk and frenzied killer in a heartbeat, and who seems like he’s been asked to coagulate the entire pantheon of Hannibal Lecter-esque evil archetypes to use as his performance. Wittrock’s take on the role is workmanlike, and I couldn’t really get my head around exactly why he didn’t just let Iris go – she couldn’t identify him, after all – when she escaped, instead pursuing her into the woods as if to dish out additional horrors to her emotional state. Then again, that would have made for a shorter film. Kelsey Asbille is great as Iris, asked to emote even without the ability to move a muscle, and as the film’s protagonist she acquits herself superbly, even if the part is undercooked. Moray Treadwell, as a hermit-like rescuer, and Daniel Francis, as a suspicious local police officer, are really the only other performances of note, and both are good in a mid-budget B-movie way.
The key selling point, however, seems to be the physicality of the premise’s central horrifying facet – that a woman is drugged into submission and has to escape her potential rapist – and in that sense Don’t Move works. It’s all abject terror from the moment Richard shocks Iris with a taser, and the flourishes by the directorial team to slowly ratchet up the “will she or won’t she escape” tension spits and spurts between excellent and mediocre. From far too obvious moments of convenience (Richard arrives at a remote cabin barely moments after Iris, who has floated down a raging torrent of a river and is utterly paralysed, almost as if he knew where she would end up) and contrived scenarios within those moments of convenience, Don’t Move tries to balance the breathless survivalist thriller tropes with attempts at ingenuity but the limited character arcs reduce a lot of this tension by clumsily bring the film to a complete stop several times. I mean, it’s not terrible, and the film isn’t a bad one, but this is where my frustration with the movie started to percolate.
A solid, at times quite effective little thriller, Don’t Move satisfies and frustrates in equal measure. Characters making baffling decisions in service of a script designed to prolong our torment for no reason, this is the main issue I had with the film, even though I am generally positive about it. I guess I was second-guessing the filmmakers throughout, considering how I might have changed things or written things to make them better, but on its merits Don’t Move is still a worthwhile watch in spite of some chasm-sized flaws. Just don’t be surprised it you’re more frustrated than frightened throughout, like I was.
Who wrote this?
