The only contemplation Brian Netto and Adam Schindler’s Netflix thriller inspired in me was about whether there’s a secret quota in the industry that demands done-do-death tropey ridiculousness like Don’t Move. And that’s coming from a pretty big fan of Finn Wittrock. Why else would the world need another movie about a grieving woman being hunted by a killer who’s the universe’s favorite and therefore slips through situations that won’t convince a toddler? In case you’re here and you haven’t given Don’t Move a watch yet, I think I’ve made my stance clear about whether or not you should keep it on your watchlist. But if like me, you’ve also experienced this sad excuse for a thriller, let me break down all these supposedly tight spaces that Wittrock’s psycho killer escapes from to get that somewhat meaningful ending of the film. I promise to take this seriously.
Spoiler Alert
What happens in the film?
We don’t get to know how long it’s been since a tragedy’s destroyed Iris’ life. She’s lost her little boy, Mateo, and she’s been having trouble living with herself ever since. And when we meet her, she’s on her way to the park which holds the last memories of little Mateo. Standing at the edge of a cliff, Iris is contemplating meeting the same fate as her late son when a sweet stranger sparks up a conversation, likely to talk her out of killing herself. This stranger, who introduces himself as Richard, is no stranger to tragedy. That’s what gets Iris to take him seriously in the first place. She recognizes a kindred spirit in this grieving man who hasn’t recovered from losing his girlfriend Chloe in a car crash that kept him stuck in bed for 2 months. At first, Richard seems like the universe’s sign that Iris should remove killing herself from her to-do list for the day. But soon, Iris finds herself in Richard’s backseat with her hands and legs bound. The only reason Richard’s talked her out of killing herself was so that he could do it for her. That pocketknife Richard missed when he overpowered Iris and forced her into his car sure comes in handy for Iris. But even though she gets herself free, jumps Richard, and causes a car crash, she can’t go too far. You see, Richard’s injected Iris with a paralytic agent that will kick in any minute now. And once it does, she’ll have just about 20 minutes until she loses all her motor skills.
What happens to William?
This isn’t Richard’s first rodeo. He’s a seasoned serial killer with a cabin where he takes his victims after paralyzing them. Given we don’t know much about his background, there’s no way to tell how Richard even gets his hands on the paralytic agent that he uses in his victims. But considering he could give Iris a thorough timetable of how she’d lose her motor skills, it’s safe to say that he’d done his research on other people. Iris knows she can’t possibly get out of the woods in time before her body shuts down. But even then, knowing she’ll be able to buy more time if she can put some distance between Richard and herself, she sets a timer on her watch and lets the stream float her away from him. Lucky for her, she washes up on William’s yard. By this point, Iris is completely paralyzed. But since both Iris and William are both smart enough to quickly establish a blink-based communication system, William figures that Iris must be in some sort of danger and brings her into his cabin. Before William can call the cops, Richard knocks on the door with a fake sob-story about how Iris is his emotionally unstable wife and he’s just trying to keep her from getting committed.
Now, William’s not gullible, but Richard’s crocodile tears affect him because he’s got wounds of his own. William’s lost his wife, and because Richard is pretending to be a very loving husband who’s moving heaven and earth to keep his wife safe, the old man feels bad for him. Richard’s really good at manipulating people who’ve lost someone. But his ruse falls apart when he gets a call. He lied to William about losing his phone. William proves to be in really good shape for his age when the situation inevitably escalates to a fight between the two of them. And while it almost seems like William has the upper hand, Richard gets access to a knife and stabs him to death. Now, he’s got to destroy any evidence of his presence at William’s place. And what better way to do that than dousing the place in gasoline and lighting it on fire? Richard would’ve left the place in flames without even knowing that Iris was there. At this point, both the choices laid out in front of Iris are terrible. She either burns to death, or she takes her chances with Richard. This whole time, she was lying still behind the couch. The effect of the paralytic agent has left her fingers, but since she’s still not able to move, she has to rely on the man who plans to kill her to get out of the burning cabin. It was a close call. Richard was already in William’s truck, ready to drive away. But because she’d rather take her chances with the killer than burn to death, Iris moved the blinds and let Richard know that she was there. Iris made the right call. Richard was too self-absorbed a psychopath to let a fire meant for someone else take the credit for his kill. For the time being, Iris was safe.
Who called the police on Richard?
What Don’t Move wants for the audience to take away from this whole ordeal is that a man can be dangerous no matter how nice he seems. When Richard’s driving the truck with a paralyzed Iris in the passenger’s seat, he gets a call from his daughter and his wife. He’s got a whole life outside of his little serial killing hobby. And from what I gather from his conversation with his wife, he’s manipulated her into letting him have these innocent weekend getaways at his cabin so he can be the kind of husband that she wants him to be. His family’s got no idea what Richard gets up to when he goes up to his cabin to have his alone time. But now that his wife wants to come for a visit at his cabin, Richard needs to improvise. When they stop for gas, Iris puts her entire strength into unlocking the seatbelt with the hope that she’ll either be able to get away or ask for help. But luck isn’t on Iris’ side. She’s completely helpless when Richard drives her back to the spot where they got in that car crash earlier. Things seem to be looking up for Iris when a cop shows up. And if you’re wondering who called the cops and reported that truck, I think it was the woman at the gas station whose little boy was staring at Iris. Richard’s got a whole litany of lies to feed to the cop. The cop doesn’t totally buy it, but he sure underestimates Richard enough to not restrain him while questioning him. That makes killing the cop a cakewalk for Richard. And once again, Iris is at the mercy of this crazy killer.
Is Richard dead or alive?
What kind of a person we should’ve expected Richard to turn out to be was foreshadowed in one of the first things he said to Iris. He mentioned being there at the park even before the bears were awake, and that was our cue to pick up on the man vs. bear indication. Iris would have had better chances at getting away if it was a bear that attacked her. But since Richard was a man, and a wildly psychotic one at that, Iris stood no chance. As Richard drives her to the nearby lake, Iris still tries to talk some sense into him by bringing up his daughter. The only mistake she makes in the process is implying that he is broken. But what comes up in their strange back and forth is certainly intriguing. All this time, it seemed as though Richard was so traumatized by inadvertently causing his girlfriend Chloe’s death that his mind fractured. But that wasn’t the case at all. As Richard corrects Iris’ notions about him, we learn that all Chloe’s death did was bring out his darkness. He must’ve always been a man with sociopathic tendencies. And when that accident happened and he watched Chloe die, he found his true calling. Richard felt like he was God, someone powerful enough to put an end to people’s lives. Ever since then, he’s been recreating that feeling with every woman he’s abducted and killed. He wanted them to feel as helpless as he did when he was tied to bed for 2 months. And after that, he relished watching the light go out of their eyes when he killed them.
The pace of Don’t Move, is bound to make you wonder why Richard’s taking all these risks and postponing the kill. The answer to that is in what he says repeatedly throughout the film. He likes to spend time with his victims before killing them. Granted, the thing with Iris didn’t go how it usually went with his kills, but he still wanted to draw it out as long as he could. Maybe it made him feel powerful. Why else would he just sit and watch as Iris jammed that needle into his leg? She couldn’t actually get her thumb to push the plunger, but it was still a big risk Richard was taking. In lieu of watching her suffer in his cabin, Richard was enjoying her helplessness as he got her on the boat and prepared to drown her. But something changed in Iris. She started this journey wanting to kill herself, but now, she has this newfound respect for her life. When they first spoke to each other, Iris told Richard that she hadn’t been able to cry after Mateo’s death. And now on the boat, she only cries to make him feel that he’s had a profound effect on her. People like Richard crave that feeling, the feeling that they’re so important that anyone having a brush with them is changed forever. That’s what softens him enough for Iris to trick him further. She begs him to hand him the little toy boat that belonged to Mateo, and when he’s soaring too high in his sense of accomplishment to even notice that she’s gotten her motor skills back, she jams his knife into his throat and shoots him with the gun he swiped from the cop he killed. When the boat drowns, her sheer willpower gets her to swim to the surface and on to the dock.
In Don’t Move’s ending, the look on Iris’ face communicates that she’s just had a profound experience. Mateo fell to his death when Iris wasn’t looking, so all this time, she’s been blaming herself for her son’s death. Maybe she needed something devastating to forgive herself for the death of her son. Maybe this was the experience that reminded her that there’s a big difference between an accident and a murder. Richard only tried to talk her out of killing herself because he wanted to do it himself. And while the matter of suicide might be too sensitive a subject to have a debate about personal choice over, what Don’t Move’s shortsighted narrative wants to talk about is how a man was trying to seize control of a woman’s autonomy. Richard has somehow managed to swim ashore too, although with him choking on his blood and those bullet wounds, I doubt that he’ll make it. Given Richard is the reason Iris has had this breakthrough, it makes sense that her last words to him are “thank you.” But this is also her way to crush his God-complex before his death. When Chloe was taking her last breath, Richard thanked her for unleashing his darkness. So by saying the same thing to Richard before his death, Iris makes sure that he dies knowing that he’s insignificant, that he’s just a chapter in someone else’s story. This may not have been the ideal way for Iris to overcome her suicidal instincts, but it did do the trick.
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