Now on Netflix, the new thriller Don’t Move keeps its story to a taut 92 minutes ā and is all the better for it.
Some of the biggest movies of all time are also the longest. Gone With The Wind: 221 minutes, or longer if you include the intermission and other bits and pieces. Avengers: Endgame ā 181 minutes. Avatar: The Way Of Water ā 192 minutes.
Even in an age of TikTok and other instant online dopamine rushes, audiences, it seems, still have strong enough attention spans to sit through lengthy movies. So much so that Oppenheimer, a three-hour drama about a theoretical physicist turned project manager, made almost a billion dollars last year. Brady Corbetās upcoming concrete architecture drama The Brutalist clocks in at a butt-numbing 215 minutes.
When it comes to choosing what to see at the cinema, movie-goers ā whether consciously or not ā appear to be seeking out stories that are grand in scope and generous in duration. Among the highest-grossing films of all time (unadjusted for inflation), just about all of them are over two hours long; the main exceptions are such family-friendly things as Inside Out 2 (a lean 96 minutes) and the The Lion King remake, which clocks in at 118 minutes.
In the 21st century, such films as Avatar, Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: No Way Home are the natural successors of the biblical epics of yesteryear ā they’re our generation’s answer to The Ten Commandments or Ben-Hur. When people go to the cinema, they want an event.
Read more: Are long films the key to saving cinemas?
Nevertheless, there’s something hugely refreshing about films that have some form of attention-grabbing concept, but keep their duration to a taut 90 minutes. Movies that don’t weigh down their stories with elaborate subplots.
All of which brings us to Don’t Move, a lean thriller that quietly emerged on Netflix on the 25th October. Directed by Adam Schindler and Brian Netto, it has a tiny cast ā there are probably all of six people on the screen in the entire movie ā and lasts just 92 minutes. Take off the end credits, and Donāt Move is an even leaner 85 minutes. It’s also hugely engrossing to watch.
Kelsey Asbille stars as Iris, a young woman who, when making a pilgrimage to the remote site of a tragedy which befell her family years earlier, happens to meet a pleasant-seeming chap named Richard (Finn Wittrock). Unsurprisingly, Richard isn’t quite as charming as he first appears, and the story is essentially about Iris’s attempts to get away from him ā a task made rather complicated because, as the title implies, Iris is completely incapacitated for much of the movie.
It’s a premise nimbly mined for suspense by its filmmakers, and joined by a terrific central performance by Asbille. In what must have been an agonising character to inhabit for much of the production, Asbille is often asked to convey an entire scene’s worth of drama and suspense with little more than a swivel of her terror-struck eyes, or the tap of a muddied fingernail.
Similarly, the film’s directors make creative use of their wilderness locations (Don’t Move is set in the USA but was shot in Bulgaria). Much of their film’s horrors take place in broad daylight, among lush trees and against pale blue skies. Some of its most suspenseful moments are the ones where the least happens: Iris lying in tall grass, unable to move, hearing the sound of something motorised approachingā¦
One of a number of serial killer thrillers we’ve seen in 2024, Don’t Move is less gory and fantastical than Oz Perkins’ phantasmagorical Longlegs, less complex in its structure than Strange Darling, and less meandering (or goofy) than M Night Shyamalan’s Trap. In its compact approach and focus on its protagonist, Schindler and Netto’s film is more akin to director Rodrigo Cortes’ claustrophobic, single-location thriller Buried (2010), which featured what is surely Ryan Reynolds’ best performance to date. There’s also a hint of writer-director Mike Flanagan’s Hush (2016) to its cat-and-mouse suspense.
Admittedly, there isn’t a great deal in Don’t Move we haven’t seen in other women-in-peril thrillers of this type. Even its title is somewhat generic ā and continues a horror naming trend Edgar Wright lampooned over 15 years ago. But again, the film’s concise storytelling becomes an advantage; everything unspools at such a fast pace that the predictability of Richard’s murderous antics hardly matters.
In contrast to the sprawling banquets of Marvel’s biggest movies, or the all-you-can-eat buffets of other major films, Don’t Move is more like a small, simple meal. The ingredients are familiar and few in number, but the resulting dish is satisfyingly well executed.
āThank you for visiting! If youād like to support our attempts to make a non-clickbaity movie website:
Follow Film Stories on Twitter here, and on Facebook here.
Buy our Film Stories and Film Junior print magazines here.
Become a Patron here.