One of this year’s biggest Internet debates was whether women would feel safer encountering a wild bear or a strange man in the woods. The fact that most ladies chose the bear is a sad reflection of how gender based violence is very much a reality for most women. Don’t Move, from producer Sam Raimi, gives this threat of misogyny a face.
In Don’t Move, Iris is a grieving mother living on the edge of depression after the accidental death of her little boy, Mateo. Early one morning, Iris leaves her house for a hike in the woods. She breaks every rule of hiking, including leaving without her mobile phone and not telling anyone – not even her husband – where she’s going. Iris, you see, has no intention of coming home.
In the woods, Iris brings herself to a cliff near where Mateo died. As she stands there contemplating her decision, she’s approached by a man. Calling himself Richard, he recognises all the signs in Iris. Like her, Richard was once suicidally depressed after an accident killed his girlfriend and left him paralysed for months. His care and compassion bring Iris back from the edge. Once Richard is convinced she won’t hurt herself anymore, he attacks her.
Richard injects Iris with a muscle relaxant that takes about 20 minutes to kick in. He tells Iris that soon, she’ll begin losing her fine motor skills, then her capacity to walk, and finally, her voice. After that, it’s game over. The one thing that Richard didn’t count on was that his formerly suicidal victim would find her will to live. Iris fights back and flees, and the hunt begins.
When I first watched the trailer for Don’t Move, I was genuinely curious to see how they would pull off this interesting concept of a woman who has only 20 minutes to escape her pursuer as she grows more helpless with every passing moment. If taken at face value, this would have been a very short film. Fortunately, Sam Raimi, along with directors Adam Schindler and Brian Netto, do an admirable job keeping things tight and tense.
Iris stumbles from one danger to the next, and at no point does the action or plot slow down, even when she does. And even though Richard promises that it’ll take only 20 minutes for Iris to become paralysed, the problem is that she remains frozen for so much longer. The excitement is in watching her figure out ways to save herself when she can no longer move or call out for help.
The premise for Don’t Move might seem very simple, but the paralysis plot device is still an emotionally compelling vehicle for driving Iris’s character development. Through this ordeal, Iris realizes that even though she believed she no longer wanted to live, it didn’t mean she wanted to die. When Richard strips Iris of her autonomy, it is only then that she is forced to fight, kicking and screaming, through the grief that has immobilised her for too long.
I’ve seen Finn Wittrock in other roles where he’s the villain (American Horror Story comes to mind). Wittrock is always good at playing magnetic misogynists. With his looks and charm, it’s easy to understand how he can seduce anyone. Yet his performance as Richard was almost subdued. Wittrock makes Richard seem so normal – a family man who’s nice and actually quite caring. Maybe that is where the true horror of it all lies.
Meanwhile, the actress who plays Iris, Kelsey Asbille, was new to me. Unfortunately, her performance here was less than stellar. It helped when Iris became increasingly paralyzed, and Asbille had an excuse for not emoting as much. But in all the scenes before that, Asbille neglected to mine the emotional depths of her character’s grief and fear. Being played by a wooden actress didn’t exactly make Iris less sympathetic, but it wasn’t as easy to connect with her.
Don’t Move isn’t really a stand out effort. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that this is a film that very competently tackles the threat of stranger danger that confronts women. And for all the pain and sorrow Iris experiences, there’s a nice bit of circularity and comfort where she finally understands that being “broken doesn’t mean hopeless.”
Follow Us