For the longest time, movies featured men avenging women who were victims of crimes committed by men. As the times changed and that trope waned in terms of popularity, women finally got to avenge themselves on the big screen. But there was a small, teeny-weeny issue: stories about women were still being written by men. So, even though we started getting female-led action thrillers, due to the inequality of opportunities in the entertainment business, the extent of the awesomeness of women was still limited by the imagination of men. There were exceptions in the form of The Bride Wore Black, Kill Bill, Gone Girl, Audition, The Long Kiss Goodnight, La Llorona, The Invisible Man, and Saani Kaayidham. But you’ve to admit that women telling stories about women dismantling the patriarchal system with some righteous violence, like Revenge, Violation, and Jennifer’s Body, were a cut above the rest. Don’t Move tries to tell a story about women’s autonomy with some feminine rage tacked on at the end, and then sort of fails to rise above its basic premise.
Adam Schindler and Brian Netto’s Don’t Move, written by T.J. Cimfel and David White, follows Iris as she gets into her car in the wee hours of the morning without informing her husband where she is going and drives all the way to a hill. As she approaches the summit, it becomes evident that that’s the place where Iris lost her son, Mateo, and she has come to visit the spot and remember him. After placing Mateo’s toy near his photo though, Iris approaches the edge of the cliff with the intention of jumping from there and ending it all. But she is stopped from doing anything drastic by a seemingly good-natured guy who claims that his name is Richard. He keeps talking until he is sort of sure that Iris isn’t going to take the plunge, and then he walks away. Everyone heaves a sigh of relief as we see Iris and Richard walking back to their respective cars. However, that’s when Richard reveals that he isn’t a good samaritan named “Richard,” but a serial killer who is there to kidnap Iris. After putting her into his car, “Richard” says that he has injected Iris with a paralytic agent, and it’s only a matter of time before she loses all her motor skills. So, before the drugs kick in, Iris has to ensure that “Richard” isn’t around to take advantage of her catatonic state.
As an elevator pitch, the plot of Don’t Move could sound great. A married woman who is mourning the loss of her child and is about to kill herself is “saved” by a serial killer so that he can immobilize her and kill her himself. You can immediately see that when this serial killer doesn’t allow the woman to take her own life, he is robbing her of the choice to do whatever she wants to do with her life. Yes, suicide is bad, but in this context, it’s a decision that she doesn’t get to make. When it comes to the paralytic drug aspect of the story, it’s about women having no control over their bodies and not being able to raise the alarm about it while being wheeled around public spaces filled with people. And all that seems hard-hitting, but as the realization sets in that this story is being told by four men and they’re repeatedly asking the question “Will she be saved or will she be killed before she gets control of her body?” something starts to seem off. To be clear, as a concept for a short film about raising awareness regarding women’s autonomy, this is probably great. However, as a 90-minute film where you’ve to see the only woman in the film be mute and immobile and have no agency of her own, the commentary on how the patriarchy is silencing women seems thin.
I don’t think I have to be the one to tell you that movies based on fictional stories are not documentaries. They don’t have to adhere to the laws of realism; they just have to be grounded in real emotions. Storytellers seem to understand this basic fact when they’ve got a male protagonist. One glance at the action and thriller genres will prove that. But when it comes to a female protagonist in a story about bodily autonomy, suddenly it has to be realistic to a dizzying extent? That’s weird. However, you know what? I would’ve been fine with realism until it showed the female protagonist essentially becoming a superhero and walking out of the frame while “You Don’t Own Me” by Deep Sea Diver blares in the background. Then I had to cringe a little because that’s when it went from a film about women to being a film about women told from the limited perspective of men (two male writers and two male directors) who want to have their cake and eat it too while saying something as plain as “men are bad and women suffer because of them.” I mean, yes, we know that, women know that, and this truth of society is horrible, but what are four men doing to affect that status quo with their fictional film? Are they, at the very least, giving women the outlet to vent their frustrations of going out into male-dominated fields where they’ve to be mindful of what they do and what they say around men through their fictional film? No, I don’t think so. In that case, what’s even the point of making a movie like Don’t Move?
Even though Don’t Move is a movie about women’s autonomy, from an acting standpoint, it seems to be tailor-made to highlight the acting chops of the villain of the film, who is being played by the immensely talented Finn Wittrock. He seems methodical during the initial phases of the kidnapping, but as things start to unravel, you can see Wittrock underscoring the insecurity, panic, and confusion setting into the mind of this guy who believes he is equivalent to God or something like that. Wittrock’s dialogue delivery is pitch perfect. He is, ironically enough, the most memorable aspect of the film. The short performances from Daniel Francis and Moray Treadwell are pretty amazing too. And then there’s Kelsey Asbille. I am sure that Asbille knew what she was getting into, and she was aware of the fact that she would’ve to spend a major chunk of her screen time “corpsing” around the landscape of California (it was apparently shot in Bulgaria). She is great at silently expressing panic, despair, and sadness. It’s just a shame that when the film reaches the point where Asbille can express everything that she has been feeling in silence throughout the film, it just ends in the blandest, most anti-climactic fashion imaginable. And if anyone tells me that giving a killer more than what they deserved would’ve made her character as bad as the villain, and that’s why she had to give such a reserved and measured performance in a movie about women’s autonomy, I’m going to lose it.
In Don’t Move, the male villain is defeated because he progressively loses his cool as he runs into unsavory situations that are a result of his actions. The female hero wins because the male villain is defeated because he progressively loses his cool as he runs into unsavory situations that are a result of his actions. If that sounds like a great way to go about an action-horror thriller about women’s autonomy, I don’t know what to tell you. This may sound controversial, but I like movies about women where a female protagonist has agency and substance and doesn’t have to rely on the flaws of the male antagonist to get her win. Furthermore, and this may sound even more controversial, I like movies about women where the female protagonist gets to partake in some righteous violence because justice for women in real life is still a distant reality. And unless male storytellers are doing all that, I’ll always prefer listening to women talking about the bodily autonomy of women through fictional or non-fictional narratives.
