If you hike or bike in city, state, or federal parks regularly, you're likely familiar with a simple, potentially life-saving rule: Always, and we do mean always, leave information behind as to where you're hiking or biking and when you're expected back.
That way, at least, your loved ones and/or whoever comes looking for you (i.e., a co-worker when you stop showing up for work) knows where to look and how long you've been missing. And if you didn't know that rule, you know it now.
In Adam Schindler and Brian Netto's backwoods thriller, Don't Move, Iris (Kelsey Asbille, Wind River), a grieving mother and wife, disregards that rule, awakening one morning, her brain fogged by the loss of her preteen son (seen via photo and flashback), and decides it's a good morning to go for a hike. Deciding against waking up her sleeping husband, she dresses quickly, leaving no note and even her phone behind. Assuming a proper cell or Internet connection, only her trusty smart-watch can save her if she runs into trouble on her hike and can't return to her car.
That trouble arrives in the person of Richard (Finn Wittrock, American Horror Story), another day-hiker who seemingly appears out of nowhere. He's friendlier than most and after casually dropping personal information about his own supposedly tragic past (i.e., a dead girlfriend, two months in the hospital recovering from near-fatal injuries), accompanies Iris back to their respective cars. Still wary, Iris keeps a safe distance as they walk and talk their way back down the mountain.
Richard isn't what he appears, of course. He's a serial killer with a particular MO: Finding isolated women, usually on a hiking trail during the week, convincing them of his good intentions, and then pouncing at the first opportunity, a hypodermic needle containing a paralytic agent in hand.
Like the unnamed others who've fallen to Richard's charms, Iris does too. Unlike Richard's other victims, however, Iris makes a quick, if temporary, escape, all while a slightly injured Richard drops some more exposition in godlike voice-over mode: within mere minutes, Iris will begin losing her motor skills until she's left suffering from "locked-in syndrome," incapable not just of movement, but even speaking, a silent witness to the horrors Richard plans to inflict on her over the next day.
Plot-wise, Don't Move doesn't exactly reinvent the serial killer sub-genre, instead relying on the usual signifiers, including ill-fated strangers who inadvertently cross paths with Richard or try to help Iris. With a running time of barely over 90 minutes, viewers can easily guess the fates of additional characters who enter the narrative well before the end credits. Those guesses will be completely right based on years of viewing time and Don't Move's stubborn inability to stray from a familiar formula. It's not a matter of if, but when a secondary character meets an untimely end at Richard's hands.
Ultimately, that leaves Don't Move more or less where it began, pitting an incapacitated if still resourceful Iris against a sketchily developed, underwritten serial killer in Richard. When the time arrives for Richard and Iris to have a late-film, no-secrets-barred talk about his real past and his motivation for turning into a serial killer, they proceed as expected, with little novelty and even less insight into Richard beyond the same tired cliches we've seen and heard countless times.
As rote and routine as Don't Move often feels (because it's both, slavishly hewing to familiar genre tropes and conventions), it delivers on its implied promise of an initially unheroic woman rising to the occasion and acting heroically. Saving herself is one goal, but relearning the ultimate lesson (life is worth living even after tragic loss) is the other lesson Don't Move takes repeated pains to emphasize.
Tightly and effectively directed with an emphasis on economic efficiency, craft, and competency, Don't Move also delivers a modicum of seat- or cushion-clutching tension and sustained suspense, exactly what viewers interested in a modest, minimally ambitious thriller could want on a Friday or Saturday night from their streaming service.
Don't Move is now streaming on Netflix.