Exploring the wild twists and that cryptic last sentence

In the Netflix thriller, Kelsey Asbille plays a young woman who is given a paralyzing drug by a dastardly serial killer (Finn Wittrock).

When you’re done Don’t move without an increased heart rate and sweaty palms, you may need to monitor your heart rate. Netflix‘s pulse-pounding slasher-cum-survival-thriller stars Yellowstone‘s Kelsey Asbille as Iris, a grieving mother looking for time for herself Finn Wittrock as Richard, the serial killer hunting her.

Directed by Adam Schindler and Brian Netto and produced by Sam Raimi, Don’t move is a well-constructed, straightforward thriller that draws inspiration from the similar theme Only (2020), as well as that of 2016 Quiet And Don’t breathe.

Those who have seen the film have raved about Asbille’s committed performance and the shocking twists that ensue Don’t move‘s second half. Since we’re still working on it, we decided to break down the film’s wild climax and Iris’s ultimate fate.

Entertainment weekly explores Netflix’s wild twists Don’t move.

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What is Don’t move about?

Asbille stars as Iris, a mother mourning the death of her teenage son Mateo, who died in a tragic hiking accident after slipping and falling over the edge of a cliff. In the first scene, Iris returns to the spot where Matteo fell, holding a small toy boat that the young boy cherished. Although Iris never speaks of her intentions, it is clear that she plans to end her own life in the place where her son died.

Then Richard (Wittrock) enters, a nice boy with a smooth conversation who insists that he is also looking for solitude on the mountain. He manages to gain her trust and literally talks her off the edge. They return to the parking lot together, but as soon as they get there, Iris sees that Richard has blocked her car. He seemingly approaches her to help, but instead shocks her with a taser disguised as an umbrella.

As Richard drives them to his cabin, Iris wakes up in his car and pulls a small knife from her pocket, using which she attacks Richard and crashes the car. The two fight briefly, but just as it looks like Iris is about to escape, Richard informs her that he injected her with a paralyzing agent during their fight. It will take effect in a few minutes.

Iris flees into the woods with Richard in pursuit. As she begins to lose control of her muscles and abilities, Iris throws herself into a river and is able to float downstream on her back until she reaches shore. She happens to wash up on the property of a widowed farmer, who finds Iris mowing his lawn. He takes her inside and is about to call the police when Richard, now identifying himself as Andrew, arrives at the door.

Richard claims he was in a car accident and lost his wife. The farmer lets Richard in, but the confrontation turns violent and Richard stabs the older man to death before setting the house on fire. Terrified of burning to death, Iris exposes herself to Richard, who carries her to the farmer’s pickup, in which they escape as the sirens draw closer.

As they drive away, Iris overhears a conversation between Richard, his daughter and his wife, discovering that the rest of his family is going to the cabin this weekend. Panicked, Richard stops at a gas station to fill up, leaving Iris alone in the truck. A young child, whom Iris briefly imagines to be Matteo, appears at the window and asks her questions. The young boy’s mother pulls him along, but she is noticeably disturbed by Iris’s motionless state.

Richard transports Iris back to his car so he can retrieve his personal belongings. As they are stopped, a police officer (Daniel Francis) arrives and informs Richard that someone has requested a welfare check on a vehicle matching the truck’s license plate. He insists on talking to Iris, who Richard claims is his wife. He attributes her condition to drinking. “I have to make sure she responds,” the officer tells Richard.

As the officer approaches her window, Iris whispers weakly, “Help me,” causing Richard to grab a large tow winch and beat the officer to death.

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How does it work? Don’t move end?

After killing the well-meaning cop, Andrew takes Iris to a dock and puts her in a small boat. With little time before his family arrives at the cabin, Richard decides to row Iris out to the middle of nowhere and kill her. Iris is able to fool Richard by pretending to cry and persuade him to bend down next to her. When he does, she stabs him in the neck with a large knife. Richard points a gun at Iris, but she rocks the boat back and forth. Richard is sent overboard as the cannon clatters to the floor of the boat.

But as with all slashers worth their mettle, Richard rises from his watery grave (baby Jason Voorhees style) and tries to attack Iris, who grabs the gun and fires several shots. Two bullets pierce Richard and send him back into the river, but several also pass through the boat. With the water rising rapidly and the paralyzing drugs still restricting her movement, Iris is faced with an impossible decision.

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What happens to Iris at the end of Don’t move?

Just as the water reaches her face, Iris takes a deep breath and immerses herself in the boat. We have several shots of the calm water and trees surrounding it, implying that Iris may not have survived her predicament until we see her emerge from the water. Matteo’s red plastic boat accompanies her to shore. Iris pulls herself onto the dock and waits as the strength in her limbs slowly returns. As that happens, she hears Richard’s painful breathing further down the beach.

Iris makes her way to a fatally wounded Richard, who is choking on his own blood after being dropped off back on shore. Iris stands over him for a moment and looks into his eyes. “Thank you,” Iris says to her attacker. Then she walks away, content to let Richard die a slow and painful death.

The final shot shows Iris returning to the spot where Matteo died and stepping back onto the rock where we first met her. But the expression with which she looks at the horizon at the end is very different from her attitude at the beginning of the film. We get the sense that, despite the unimaginable tragedy she has endured, Iris will not only live to see another day, but will live it for herself.

Why does Iris thank Richard at the end of the film?

While it may seem like a strange choice considering all that Richard has put on Iris, she thanks him before leaving him to die on the shore.

When he first met Iris, Richard tried to show empathy for her loss of her son and told a story about how terrible his last words to his beloved Chloe were, so terrible that he wouldn’t repeat them – until he does . Later, when Iris can talk but is still mostly paralyzed in the truck, he explains that as Chloe lay dying in the terrible car accident for which he was responsible, his last words to her were, “Thank you.” After spending two months in the hospital after the accident, he had a moment of “clarity” about who he was: God.

Iris’s “Thank you” at the end certainly plays like an act of revenge – for herself and perhaps for Chloe – but everything that’s happened to Richard has led to her own epiphany: she wants to live. The last shot of Don’t move shows Iris standing on the spot where her son died with a look of determination, instead of the sadness and hopelessness she started the film with.

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Asbille spoke The one from Netflix Tudum about the film’s messages of rebirth and renewal, and what exactly that last ‘thank you’ was supposed to mean. “For me, the film is a conversation with itself about the will to live,” Asbille explains. She further noted how the film begins with Iris trapped in her own grief, before putting her in a situation where she is literally trapped within herself. “That makes the genre perfect for this kind of exploration – we’re able to show her existential paralysis physically rather than just metaphorically.”

Asbille continued: “I believe there is a moment when Iris chooses to live, and not just survive. That resonated with me: desperately fighting to overcome something that made you feel paralyzed.”

“It’s double-edged, because on the one hand she’s sticking it to him, but there’s a genuine realization on her part of, ‘Wow, okay, I owe this man my life because I didn’t want to fight for my life.’ before I met him,” agreed co-director Netto.

“Kelsey starts the movie helpless,” Raimi explained Tudum. “She has been through a lot and it feels like she has reached the end of her road. I think interacting with Finn’s character throughout the film, even though it’s a suspenseful film, it’s also a character film and she develops what she had lost: that desire to live.