“Don’t Move” is an abduction thriller without a statement. I mean, despite being 93 minutes long, the film barely manages to retain a coherent plot line. This is no suspense thriller, it is simply a casual abduction story with all the typical aggressiveness one might assume. Even the exposition of the movie seems out of place, the lack of an engaging build-up only adds to the already lackluster experience. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
With Sam Raimi at the helm, Brian Netto and Adam Schindler completely disregard Iris as a character in T.J. Cimfel and David Whiteake’s lackluster script. Although Iris (Kelsey Asbille, “Yellowstone”) was introduced to waking up with her husband, I believe she slept for far too long as she appeared completely dazed. In a hiking incident, the couple remains childless due to the unfortunate death of their son. The tragic demise of the child happened while the couple attempted to carve the child’s initials onto a tree. The young Mateo had reportedly placed the admitted cliff’s edge m platter. I wish I could. She silently dresses up and leaves this morning, ensuring not wake her husband. On the other hand, she grabbed her son’s red toy boat and a Swiss army knife and went out driving to the hiking trail.
“Iris, who is deeply distressed, is set up to go on a trip with Richard, a self-proclaimed life savior who has towering muscle, and a cheap talk.”
“It’s so lovely,” says Iris, ignoring Richard. “I feel like we’re at the top of the world.” The man in the picture looks nice, yet Richard interrupts Iris when she’s about to jump off the edge. He shares the information of how a few years back when his partner died in a car crash, he contemplated suicide. In a way, he convinces Iris of the fact that life isn’t worth as little as she believes. Now they both go down the same stones that they previously used to get to the summit; however, this time it is apparently in search of their vehicles. What follows is the abduction of Iris by Richard who pours anesthesia on her and wants to get her to his secluded cabin to spend a splendid romantic weekend with her. As if there was any doubt about that, Richard’s brilliant plan completely disregards the force of nature that Iris is. He does manage to restrain her for a while, but as always, she slips away and becomes his once more.
The character of Richard is not too different from M Night Shyamalan’s Trap. Much like Cooper Abbott from Josh Hartnett’s film, Richard too is quick on his feet. He smooth-talks the mountain man barring Iris and quickly comes up with believable sensitive covers and grand lies whenever his intentions are left to ask him. He has got a family too who have no idea he is a psychopathic killer. However, this is as far as the similarities between the two movies- “Don’t Move” and “Trap’ are concerned. As pointed out earlier this is not a movie that is gleefully psychologically fascinated by its antagonist. Richard is just a threatening character as Ghastly smiles without possessing an emotional core. It would be no surprise though as Richard is an emotionless character, Wittrock has to stress to inject discomfort into stupid situations that only mute the already barely existing heartbeat of the film.
It is best not to hold one’s breath for a film where Iris is not seen in its entirety. You can similarly point a similar incuriosity at how the film doesn’t truly see Iris. Since the character remains mostly mute in the thriller, Asbille, as the mute character, needs to give some nuance to the performance. However, that limited work her darting eyes and the twitching muscles showcase her paralyzed grief.
We never seem to rise beyond the straightforward image of Iris grieving for her son or the trauma that for years has afflicted her after his sudden passing. This shows us how the movie attends to Iris’ grief almost exclusively as if she were the only affected party. Aside from a few quick flashbacks, the movie never finds any imaginative way to break through the character’s paralyzed encasement. As the film unfolds, we stay with Iris for the entire movie, only to discover that there are no new developments concerning her character from what was revealed in the first ten minutes.
Don’t Move is also plagued with poor VFX, an overly enthusiastic soundtrack, and is unable to build up an atmosphere that would convince the viewers this is a well-thought-out thriller. Most of the praise that can be given to Don’t Move would be better fitted to it with a note that something better could have been said if one was willing to start the movie on Netflix and spend some undetermined amount of time on it, but the minute that would be spent is simply inconsequential.
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