'Don't Move' is better than many Netflix thrillers, which isn't saying much
Netflix
Spend enough time drunkenly playing “Make movie ideas by combining pieces of other ones” and you might accidentally blend the physical limitations of “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” the heartbreaking guilt of “Manchester by the Sea,” and, well, any generic serial killer effort, including the recent “Trap.” Voila! We’ve got “Don’t Move,” a Netflix thriller in which eerie maniac Richard (Finn Wittrock) injects Iris (Kelsey Asbille) with a serum that takes 20 minutes to temporarily shut down her entire body, resulting in a total stillness not dissimilar from the months she has spent in bed mourning the loss of her son. That, obviously, is heavy, and much of this relatively brief (85 minutes) viewing experience isn’t what I’d call pleasant.
Is it worth seeing anyway? Yes, barely, both for Asbille’s investment in the part and for a stirring depiction of a predator who doesn’t want to play fair and his target who will fight back in any way possible.
To an extent, “Don’t Move” writes itself into a corner; it’s best in the opening and closing sections, setting up its horrible circumstances and then bursting into the possibility of release. In between time is passed with one potential oasis after another, and Richard’s inevitable explosions. These encounters sag the tension instead of juicing it, and the ticking clock of Iris’ lack of mobility and then its return isn’t exactly, well, exact, no matter how effectively the performance captures how it feels.
Directors Brian Netto and Adam Schindler know how to shoot what’s important here, though, being present as Iris struggles and attempts to defend herself, and writers T.J. Cimfel and David White avoid several head-smacking choices that M. Night Shyamalan makes in the aforementioned “Trap.” You probably won’t recommend “Don’t Move” to many people, and it won’t necessarily hold you in its grip the entire time. But its sense of loss, and the resulting, disarming vulnerability, feels authentic.
And any thriller that makes you feel something at the end, and pulls off its notions of rebirth in the face of unthinkable adversity, has done a couple things right.
B-
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