The nail-biting ending of Netflix thriller ‘Don’t Move’ explained
Iris (Kelsey Asbille) tries to escape a serial killer after being injected with a paralyzing drug in “Don’t Move.”
Warning: major spoilers ahead for “Don’t Move.”
Netflix is doubling down on nerve-racking films about serial killers with its latest thriller, “Don’t Move.”
Last week, “Woman of the Hour” was the most-watched film on Netflix film in the US, but it has since been dethroned by “Don’t Move,” which premiered on Friday.
Both films are about serial killers, a topic that explored in Hollywood films for decades, and which Netflix has found success with in recent years thanks to hits like “You” and “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.”
“Don’t Move” does not have the same star power to attract audiences as “Woman of the Hour,” but the premise does the heavy lifting.
In the film, Iris (Kelsey Asbille) grieves the death of her child and plans to die by suicide by jumping off a cliff in the middle of a forest.
But she meets Richard (Finn Wittrock), a handsome, charismatic man who persuades her off the ledge before kidnapping her.
When Iris attempts to escape, Richard reveals that he has injected her with a drug that will paralyze her entire body in an hour. Thus starts a tense chase as Iris tries to escape Richard before she can no longer move her body.
In ‘Don’t Move’ Iris must save herself
Richard (Finn Wittrock) searching for Iris (Kelsey Asbille) in “Don’t Move.”
The paralyzing drug works quickly, incapacitating Iris within the film’s first hour. Then, Iris is at the mercy of other people who find her paralyzed body.
A hermit finds her, then a mother and a child, and a cop notices Iris while she is stuck in a truck with Richard. None of them immediately realize she’s in danger, and by the time they do, it is too late to save her.
The hermit and the cop also nearly hand Iris over to Richard, believing his story that she is his mentally unstable or alcoholic wife. They only realize Richard is lying after he makes a dumb slip-up, but he kills both men before they can help Iris escape.
These scenes echo society-wide conversations about believing victims brought to the fore by the #MeToo movement, and the role that men can play in supporting women and stopping behaviors that enable abuse.
In “Don’t Move,” Iris saves herself. In the film’s last scenes, Richard takes Iris to the lake to kill her and bury her in the water.
By the time Richard rows a boat to the center, the drug is wearing off, and Iris can move her body in short bursts.
She tricks Richard into coming close to her, steals his knife, and stabs him in the neck. Iris forces Richard out of the boat and shoots him with a gun that he took from the cop.
Richard starts swimming to shore, and Iris’ boat starts sinking due to a leak from the gunshots. But she somehow regains her full body movement just in time to swim.
Iris saying “thank You” to Richard has two meanings
Audiences never learn Richard’s (Finn Wittrock) real name in “Don’t Move.”
After returning to shore, Iris finds Richard bleeding out by the lake. She kneels and says, “Thank you,” before walking away.
Some fans may have missed what that scene is referencing.
While Iris is still paralyzed, Richard tells her of his ex-lover, Chloe, who died in front of him after a car crash.
As Chloe dies, Richard realizes that he likes the feeling of seeing women die. He says it makes him feel like God, and thus, he starts luring women to the woods to kill them and recreate that feeling.
Richard told Iris his last words to Chloe as she died was, “Thank you.” So Iris says it back to him at the end as payback.
Asbille and the film’s directors, Brian Netto and Adam Schindler, told Tudum that Iris also genuinely thanked Richard for inspiring her to live. Her grief emotionally paralyzed her, but now she is free and determined to stay alive.
“It’s double-edged, because she’s sticking it to him on one end, but there is some genuine realization on her part of, ‘Whoa, OK, I do owe this man my life because I didn’t want to fight for my life before I met him,'” Netto said.
