Don't Move

For psychological thrillers, it’s a given that we live in a broken world, a place with predators lurking around. Usually isolated from civilisation, literally and metaphorically, such a space evokes fear, horror and then survivalist tendencies. A new Netflix film Don’t Move portrays a similar canvas where a 30-something Iris (Kelsey), grieving the accidental death of her child, has lost the will to live, but she surprises herself with the fightback she still has in her when a family man-cum-ruthless kidnapper Richard (Finn) enters the scene.

A young woman grieving the death of her child treks to the cliffside spot where he died. She intends to jump herself. Played by Kelsey Asbille, the woman is approached by a mysterious stranger, played by Finn Wittrock. He recognises immediately that she’s one step away from falling to her death. The stranger doesn’t attempt to talk her down from the ledge, but he makes enough of an impression for her to reconsider. They walk back together to the parking lot, where things take a sudden turn. The man injects her with some kind of paralytic substance, revealing that he isn’t a good samaritan after all. Thus begins Don’t Move, a high-concept thriller that producer Sam Raimi probably thought was going to turn out like his knockout 2016 film Don’t Breathe. It didn’t. These movies have nothing in common beyond Raimi’s involvement, and that gentle nudge of a title. In terms of quality, they couldn’t be further apart from each other. Don’t Move appears to be so pleased with its premise — it’s a survival thriller featuring an immobile protagonist! — that it forgets it needs to sustain this early momentum. The movie succeeds in drawing your sympathies for its heroine, Iris, but struggles to put her in interesting scenarios after this pre-credits sequence.