This article contains details about the main characters and plot.
At the beginning of Don’t Move, Iris (Kelsey Asbille) is going through hell. It is the tragic death of her young son and a bout of depression that brings her to a breaking point. But her story doesn’t end there. By the time the credits roll, she has overcome a psychopathic killer (Finn Wittrock) who uses paralyzing drugs to trap her in her body. But in a twisted way, this ordeal teaches Iris a valuable lesson about herself.
“For me, this film is a dialogue with myself about the will to live,” Asbir tells Tudam. “That’s why this genre is perfect for this kind of exploration. By playing a character who is initially trapped by her own grief and then injected with a drug that literally makes her unable to move, we are able to explore her existential paralysis. “We can physically demonstrate that.”It’s not just a metaphor. ”
“Kelsey starts the movie helpless,” producer Sam Raimi told Tudam. “She’s been through a lot and feels as if she’s reached the end of her path. Through her interactions with the character Finn throughout the movie, even though it’s a suspense movie, it’s also a character movie. , I think she develops what she lost: the desire to live.”
It takes a threat to her life in the form of Whitlock’s Richard to reveal the true depth of Iris’ survival instincts. Find out more about how Iris ultimately escapes at the end of this chilling new thriller.
How did Richard paralyze Iris?
He uses a paralyzing drug that takes 20 minutes to take effect and an hour to wear off. Richard, a serial killer, uses a counterintuitive strategy to seduce Iris by persuading her to stop committing suicide as she stands on the edge of the cliff where her son died. “He has to be someone who is empathetic, someone who is curious, someone who can literally go there and literally persuade someone off the ledge successfully,” co-director Brian Nett tells Whitlock’s Tudam .
However, after bonding with Iris by revealing his own tragic loss (he lost his high school girlfriend, Chloe, in a car accident), Richard reveals his true nature. “I think he definitely has human empathy and human emotions,” Whitlock tells Tudham. “He’s really good at manipulating them, too, and he’s a really good actor himself.” Richard then memorably drops his mask, injecting Iris with a paralyzing drug and kidnapping her. He takes her to a nearby cabin, where he intends to torture her and eventually drop her body into a lake.
“[Finn]is perfect for this role because he’s so charming,” Raimi says. “You trust him. People have seen him play villains, but he has this leadership quality that makes him great on the other side of Kelsey. .”
But despite her twisted charms, Iris won’t stay silent. Before the drug takes effect, she crashes her car and flees, jumping into a roaring river. The river takes her straight to the backyard of an elderly gentleman, Bill (Moray Treadwell). At this point, Iris is completely frozen and can only blink in response to Bill’s questions. “The script depicts a stage of paralysis, but you have to convey your emotional experiences and inner conflicts, and physically you are very limited,” Asbir says. “It was a challenge, but it was fun to solve it together.”
How will Iris escape from the hut?
With Iris paralyzed, the filmmakers faced a self-imposed obstacle. “One of the biggest challenges I was afraid of was that the script required the actress to be still for many minutes in the film, and I was worried that the audience would become restless.” says Raimi to Tudam. “But[Kelsey]is very good at acting with the most subtle movements of her eyes and face, and it works beautifully.”
Asbir worked with trainer Eric Johnson to accomplish the surprisingly arduous task of staying still. “Instead of just building muscle, I focused on endurance, especially to sustain isolated movements in the more demanding environments of the film,” she says.
Still, the filmmakers turned to Whitlock and Treadwell for the next sequence. In that sequence, Richard breaks into Bill’s room, pretending to be a worried husband looking for Iris after a car accident. “For most of this movie,[Kelsey]doesn’t speak and[Finn]has to continue the story and keep things moving,” co-director Adam Schindler told Tuduum. “So it was very important to find someone who is attractive enough to be the bad guy, but who you feel like you like him.”
Hiding Iris behind Bill’s couch, Richard uses all of his charm on Bill, desperately appealing to the widow’s sympathy. It almost works, but Richard’s phone rings and his first lie (that he lost his phone in an accident and needs to borrow one) is revealed. “I thought this was a really big challenge: How can I really convince this person that what I’m saying is true?” Whitlock said. “And he almost escaped!”
Instead, Richard defeats Bill and sets the shed on fire, nearly killing Iris. But she musters up the strength to pull the blinds open, alerting him to her presence and saving his life for now.
What happened to Richard’s girlfriend?
After picking up Iris, Richard receives a surprising phone call from his daughter. It was this scene that immediately appealed to Whitlock. “I remember reading the script and thinking, ‘I have to do this,’ and he got a call from his family back home,” Whitlock says. “Suddenly, something awakens. He changes completely, and suddenly a completely different life opens up.”
Iris gets stuck with Richard again, and once she regains control of her vocal chords, she begins picking at her girlfriend’s death scab and pricking him with needles. In a way, it works.
As an actor, Richard comes to believe that his performance is truthful, but Iris breaks him out of character. “In a twisted way, he actually respects her and really likes her,” Whitlock says. “I can’t stop him from murdering, because that’s what he’s doing. But I think she touched a very vulnerable nerve in him, perhaps the last nerve he had left.” Masu.”
There, Richard reveals the truth behind the sob story. He says the incident did not drive him insane. He says it helped him regain his clarity. What were his last words to Chloe? “Thank you.” As he watched her die, Richard discovered the murderer within himself.
Directors Netto and Schindler warn audiences not to take Richard’s words at face value. “It’s kind of a fucked-up therapy session for both of them,” Schindler says. “Whether he’s telling the truth or not, there are signs of truth in what he’s saying.”
Whitlock acted out the scene as if everything he was saying was true. “He’s trying to recreate that experience, the actual love that he had and lost, and he’s trying to understand himself,” Whitlock says. “Why did[he]feel so good in that dark, dark moment? That he was doing this to different women because he was trying to solve a piece of a puzzle. I think so.”
Why does Iris thank Richard at the end of Don’t Move?
By the time his family arrives, Richard is running out of time and decides to abandon the cabin and head straight to the lake, pulling Iris into the rowboat and preparing for his own death. At the same time, Iris is regaining range of motion. In the boat, she manages to stab Richard in the face with her own hunting knife and shoot him with her own gun. He falls overboard, and Iris has to struggle to get back to shore as the boat sinks, riddled with bullet holes.
But once she reaches land, she encounters something surprising. Richard was also dragged out of the lake, slowly bleeding out. She leaves him with a final kiss-off, an echo of the words that characterized Richard’s own breakthrough. “thank you”.
“I think there’s a moment where Iris chooses to live, not just survive,” Asbir says of the film’s final moments. “Fighting desperately to overcome something that has left you feeling numb, that’s what resonated with me.” She expressed her gratitude to Richard, even if it was under a murderous motive He acknowledges his role in its evolution, even if it was a given. She is now finally free of physical and emotional paralysis.
That means Iris’ “thank you” is a lot more sincere than I first thought. “Kelsey put her heart and soul into this movie and really created this journey of someone who has lost hope to someone who has hope again,” Raimi says. “I can tell because I’m so moved by the end of this movie. She has a soul and she knows how to give the audience a glimpse of it.”
Netto and Schindler agree. It’s a moment that puts you in Richard’s shoes, but it also has a kernel of truth. “It’s double-edged because she’s clinging to him on one end. But on her side, it’s like, ‘Hey, I get it, I owe this man my life, because I owe my life. ‘Because I didn’t want to fight for ‘before I met him,’ says Neto.
“I believe in this line in the best sense of the word. Thank you for giving me the will to live again,” Raimi says.
Whitlock saw the weight of the moment as a challenge. “If you’re reading this book as an actor, you’re thinking, ‘Okay, we’ve got to earn this ‘thank you.'” I think in the back of our minds we were both like, “We’ve got to get to a place at the end of the movie where this line rings true.” ”
To the coaches, there is no doubt that these two have gotten there. “The realization on his face when he says his words back to her is one of my favorite parts of the movie,” Schindler added. “It’s like, ‘What?'” I can’t believe this is happening. ” ”
“Don’t Move” is available on Netflix.
