From the simplistic and generic sounding title, Don’t Move promised a tense thriller. Instead we got a predictable movie that didn’t have me on the edge of my seat or screaming at the screen at the protagonist’s idiotic answers. At one point, I got so bored with the movie that I actually got up and went and got a drink and a snack without pausing the movie. And when I returned, I hadn’t missed anything. I even rewinded just in case I did miss something. But I didn’t. And that right there is one of the biggest faults of the movie.
There are big sweeping scenes within Don’t Move that nothing happens. And a lot of times you would expect those moments to ramp up the tension and make me feel something. But that didn’t happen in this movie. We had continuous scenes from the perspective of the protagonist that didn’t add anything to the overall narrative of the story. And I know they were restricted by the simple fact that the protagonist has been paralyzed by a psychotic killer that she meets when she almost kills herself at the location of where her child died. But that’s when a movie gets creative in the same vein that other movies like A Quiet Place have done.
MORE: Looking for something actually nail-biting? Read our review for Oddity.
I want to say that I felt empathy for the main character or I thought she was a bumbling fool as she took on this psycho she met in the woods. But I didn’t even feel that. If anything, the moments where nothing happened made it so the lead actress Kelsey Asbille had to work harder to emote the kind of journey she was on. It’s like the movie’s weight was on her shoulders because the rest of the movie spent so much time doing nothing. And unfortunately, Asbille was not able to emote the pain that she felt at the loss of her child or anger or frustration at the situation that she was in.
If anything, Finn Wittrock was the only one who stood out in Don’t Move. And he didn’t even do a stellar performance. His acting as Richard was very stilted in comparison to his other work within American Horror Story for example. But the fact that the movie spent so much time not adding anything to the narrative, combined with Asbille’s Iris giving us nothing, elevated Wittrock’s performance. And I’m not even talking about the whole movie. I’m talking about the beginning of the movie where he was just an innocent stranger looking out for someone on the edge. He was able to play that really well before switching to a demented character who mocked Iris as she lay in that backseat. The rest of his acting is just ok.
MORE: There’s another movie where they don’t talk and actually emote more than this lead character. Read our review for Azrael.
Another thing that worked against Don’t Move is that we got more of the villain when it came to emoting or creating a chilling atmosphere because she was paralyzed. So I was experiencing the movie more through Richard’s eyes than hers. And it didn’t help that the actress was giving us, again, nothing when it came to expressing the insurmountable anguish that she was in as she fought for her life. This changed the perspective of the movie and made it hard to cheer for this final girl to survive. Because that’s what you want when it comes to a survival/horror/thriller like this. And I didn’t even get that.
Outside of flat acting or big sweeping moments that added nothing to the narrative, whoever did the cinematography for Don’t Move, did a pretty good job. This is particularly true when Iris was laying in the grass. We got to see things from her perspective. And I feel like this is the only time in the movie where I felt like I was experiencing what she was. From the way that we got to see the grass moving and wonky ways as she fought through the paralytic or how her eyes tracked that plane in the sky, I felt her disorientation and how the world kept moving around her as she lay there fighting. This is what Don’t Move should have leaned into; using lights, camera angles, or composition to put us in her shoes. That would have helped in ramping up the tension and making me as the viewer invested in her journey of survival.
Watch the trailer for Don’t Move below:
Don’t Move is now available on Netflix.
