Co-directors Brian Netto and Adam Schindler’s Don’t Move got me interested with the fact it was produced under Sam Raimi’s production banner with the man himself serving as one of the producers and of course, boasting a high-concept storytelling hook for a horror-thriller genre: What if you find your whole body completely paralyzed?
But the result of the paralysis has nothing to do with an accident, stroke, spinal cord injury or even nerve disorders. Instead, it happens due to the paralytic agent injection by a… psychotic serial killer. That killer in question is Richard (Finn Wittrock of TV’s American Horror Story) or at least that’s what he called himself after he met a grieving young woman, Iris (Kelsey Asbille of TV’s Teen Wolf and Yellowstone). Iris is going for a morning hike at the time somewhere in the remote wilderness and arrives on the mountain, where her little son Mateo (Denis Kostadinov) tragically died in an accident.
After Iris and Richard strike up some conversations, it looks as if the latter is a kind Samaritan trying his best to console her. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take long before Richard shows his true colors after he tases her when he has his chance. The next thing she knows, she wakes up with hands on her back and legs zip-tied and lying in the backseat of a moving vehicle.
She eventually manages to free herself at one point and made her way into the woods, only to find herself to gradually lose her motor functions. At first, it was her fingers and it gets worse from there. The reason? Richard has injected her earlier and according to him, she has 20 minutes before her entire body shuts down except for her eyes. With Iris unable to move or even speak, the only method of communication is blinking and moving her eyes.
It was an intriguing point of view to see a helpless protagonist devoid of mobility while fighting for her survival and here, Asbille is given the opportunity to showcase her predominantly dialogue-free performance which relies heavily on her eyes to do the acting. Such a role is not easy to pull off but Asbille manages to shine with her expressive eyes in conveying her character’s sense of fear, sadness and desperation. It’s hard not to sympathize with her ordeal not only trying to cope with the loss of her loved one but also the dire situation that she forces to endure.
Her co-star, Wittrock is given a showy role of a deranged serial killer beneath the façade of a handsome, good-guy persona. A lesser actor who plays a serial killer character can easily succumb to overacting or chewing scenery but Wittrock’s overall acting displays the right sense of restraint and composure without going overboard. He knows how to improvise and act accordingly when he encounters an obstacle (his scenes with an elderly man and later, a local cop), making sure no one will get in his way.
Credits also go to Netto and Schindler, whose directions contain some gripping moments of build-up suspense from the pre-credits sequence to the entire scene revolving around Richard showing up in an elderly man’s (Moray Treadwell’s Bill) remote cabin. The subsequent encounter with a local cop (Daniel Francis) who pulls over his police car to check on Richard’s truck deserves equal mention as well. Don’t Move also showcases some graphic violence and brutality but Netto and Schindler keep them uncomfortable enough without resorting to gratuitous moments.
As much as I enjoyed the movie, I can’t help feeling the otherwise compact 90-minute runtime suffers from a padded-out narrative, particularly when it approaches the third act. It looks as if there isn’t much Netto and Schindler can stretch from T.J. Cimfel and David White’s fascinating but narratively limited script. This is especially true with the fundamental concept of an immobile protagonist suffering from paralysis. Creativity in generating suspense and tension along with the ingenuity of sustaining a consistent momentum is crucial to maintaining an airtight pace and while Netto and Schindler do show some flashes of filmmaking brilliance, I wish they could have done more in elevating the concept to the fullest potential.
Overall, Don’t Move isn’t quite the ingenious thriller that I hoped for but it still has its few moments while Asbille and Wittrock are two promising actors who deserve to lead more movies in the future.
