‘Don’t Move’ Ending Explained & Movie Recap: Is Iris Dead Or Alive?

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Although it’s a rare occurrence, sometimes the ones who help us in out direst hour end up being the cause of the greatest sorrow. Netflix’s outdoor thriller, Don’t Move, directed by Adam Schindler and Brian Natto, exemplifies this through a mildly engaging narrative, which squanders its interesting premise in the final half of the movie. With a streamlined plot and two leads as the only major characters in the movie, there was potential for a better narrative treatment using the elements and cues from the story itself. Unfortunately, like numerous recent OTT thrillers, this one doesn’t seem to have a clear-cut idea about how to utilize the idea it proposes and ends up bringing a poorly contrived story that tests the limits of suspension of disbelief. 

Spoilers Ahead


How Did Iris Get Trapped By Richard?

A grieving mother, Iris, misses her recently deceased young kid, Mateo, dearly, whose death was caused by parental negligence. Unlike her husband, Iris hasn’t been able to find peace with the untimely demise of their son and blames herself for the tragedy. As the movie begins, we find Iris deciding to give up on her life as she goes to the mountain hiking trail where Mateo spent his last  moments, pays her regards to the shrine she had made for her son, and reaches the summit—where the poor kid met his end. However, moments before she is about to end her life by jumping off the cliff, she is interrupted by the appearance of a hiker named Richard. Seeing Iris glaring towards the edge, Richard is quick to realize exactly what is going on, and he tries to convince her to step back to safety. In a mentally vulnerable situation such as this, basic words and gestures can work magic, and Richard decides to share his story with Iris to help her share her emotional burden. 

Richard recalls his college years, when he lost his girlfriend, Chloe, in a harrowing car accident. Richard wasn’t able to find solace after Chloe’s departure, as the last moment he shared with her in the car was of arguing with each other. Listening to Richard’s story, Iris finds out that they share a common feeling of grief and trusts him enough to share her plight with him. Richard seems an upstanding and kind person, as without trying to coerce Iris much about changing her decision, he simply leaves with a word of advice and a few verbal cues—which are enough to convince Iris to refrain from taking such a drastic step. However, Iris soon finds herself in the most horrible situation imaginable, as while parting ways in the vacant parking area, Richard blocks her way and uses a taser to knock her out. Upon waking up, Iris finds herself at the backseat of Richard’s car with her hands and legs tied; she can’t use her smartwatch due to lack of cellular connection and has left her phone at  home as well. As Iris tries to reason with her captor in vain, she learns that this isn’t the first time that the seemingly good guy Richard—or whatever his undisclosed real name is—has done something like this. There have been a number of women who have fallen prey at his hands, whom he has taken to his cabin in the woods for despicable reasons known only to him—and now Iris is going to meet the same fate. However, Iris manages to turn the table soon enough by using a hidden pocket knife to secretly untie herself while distracting Richard in small talks, and the moment Iris frees herself, she attacks Richard, which results in the car colliding with a tree to come to a standstill. But as she is about to leave, Richard reveals that he has drugged her using a specialized relaxant that will shut her nervous system for an hour, and there are roughly twenty minutes at her disposal before she turns catatonic. In the middle of nowhere, Iris cannot afford to follow the road in the hopes of coming across a rescuer, as Richard will end up capturing her by then, and with very limited time at her disposal, she needs to hide herself as soon as possible. Iris rushes into the woods to find cover while Richard chases after her while taunting her throughout. 


Why Did Iris Allow Herself To Get Captured Again?

Iris realizes that Richard was not bluffing about the drugs, as she feels her mobility getting reduced with each passing moment. She won’t be able to stay hidden while remaining catatonic, and as a result, Iris considers it wiser to jump into the river by the woods and flow downstream wherever she ends up. Richard witnesses this and plans to follow along the riverbank. 

With her body shutting off bit by bit, it’s a miracle that Iris manages to stay afloat and eventually reaches a relatively safer location, where an elderly homesteader, William, rescues her—and by now, her body has reached the catatonic state. Iris can see and hear everything, but the only way she can respond is through blinking, which is kind of strange and given complete nervous system shutdown means total pause in muscular movement as well. However, even with a lack of verbal communication, William realizes that Iris is in grave danger when a stranger knocks at his door and Iris repeatedly blinks to signal danger. William hides Iris and attends to the stranger, which turns out to be none other than Richard himself. William tries to keep Richard away from his home, but pretending to be Iris’ troubled husband who is concerned for her neurotic condition, Richard manages to get inside and acts his heart out to gain sympathy from William. Now even though William is quite skeptical of him, he himself had anger management issues, which his late wife tried to rectify. Listening to Richard’s concocted story about marital issues stemming from psychological problems, William unwittingly becomes a bit sympathetic towards Richard and gets convinced by his lies. William nearly confesses hiding Iris, but a minor slip up on Richard’s part results in William becoming wary of him once again, and this time he distracts Richard to catch him off guard and incapacitates him momentarily. William contacts the authorities, reporting Richard as an intruder with malicious intent, and regaining his footing, Richard begins a scuffle with the old man.

For a person of his age, William appears surprisingly tough, as he beats up Richard quite easily, but once the latter gets a hold of a knife, its over for the veteran homesteader. After killing William, Richard sets his house on fire to burn any possible evidence—especially now that the authorities are on their way. He fails to notice Iris lying on the ground in the same room, and as Richard is about to leave, Iris has no option except to signal Richard to rescue her. Her mobility is returning very slowly, and using her fingertips, Iris manages to move the blinds, which Richard is quick to spot as a visual cue. For someone who was eager to take her own life, Iris seems to have profound fear of death as well, so much so that she allows Richard, her captor, who plans to torment her in ways known only to him, to rescue her. 


How Did Iris Learn About Richard’s Background?

As Richard drives on, taking Iris by his side in William’s truck, he receives a call from his daughter, Olivia, and wife, Lizzie, who inform him about their plan to visit the family cabin to spend the weekend with him—the same place where Richard was planning to torment Iris. For inexplicable reasons, Richard had put the phone on loudspeaker, which results in Iris learning about his family as well, and she also learns from their conversation that Richard has been taking occassional breaks to visit the cabin, using the excuse of self-healing, while the harrowing truth remains a secret. 

Richard stops at a gas station to fuel up, while Iris, still unable to make her body move, lies helplessly in the car seat, hoping for someone to take notice, but even then she will not be able to convey anything. A kid, the same age as Mateo, approaches her, whose mother quickly takes him away—but the cry for help in Iris’ eyes doesn’t remain unnoticed. As Richard drives away, the mother calls the authorities to inform them about Iris with details of the truck, as she feels that Iris is in need of assistance. Which is why when Richard makes it back to his wrecked-up car to tow it with the help of William’s truck, a cop arrives at the location and begins questioning him about the entire ordeal. This time, Richard’s lies aren’t able to cover up the obvious, questionable scenario, as the officer grows suspicious of him. Iris manages to faintly ask for help and manages to gather enough of her mobility back to show the syringe. However, Richard attacks the cop with the tow cable end and, after bludgeoning him to death, sets his corpse and the police car on fire. This guy seems to have a thing for committing arson as well. However, with a trail of bodies behind him, it becomes quite clear that Richard is galloping towards his own doom. 


Did Iris Survive At The End?

Iris has regained her ability to speak, and she begins to talk to Richard to distract him long enough to successfully dose him with the same drugs, a syringe of which she has hidden while Richard was murdering the officer. Richard maintains that not everything he revealed about himself was a lie; he indeed lost his girlfriend Chloe in the car accident years ago. Much to Iris’ shock, she learns it is not the survivor’s guilt or the agony of losing a loved one that turned Richard into a psychotic individual preying on a lonely woman; it is a strange God complex that stemmed from a sense of clarity that he received the moment he witnessed Chloe breathing her last. While this might be chalked up as pure lunacy and posttraumatic shock disorder, Richard actually never appears to be suffering from any form of mental derangement. He appears as balanced as any sane individual, and this god complex of his seems to be a byproduct of dysfunctional patriarchal power dynamics. Iris tries to appeal to his senses by mentioning his family and the possible repercussions of his actions, which might end up separating him from his family—especially from his daughter, Olivia, with whom Richard seems to share a strong bond. Iris uses Richard’s mind tricks on him to catch him off guard, to fluster him, but this ends up triggering him enough to take Iris to a waterfront with the intention of drowning her to death. Using the strength she has been able to muster, Iris stabs Richard with the syringe but fails to inject the drugs at the end. 

A hopeless Iris can’t help but ask Richard the point in all this. She was prepared to take her life anyway; why did Richard even bother to even stop him in the first place if his own nefarious plans culminated in Iris’ death anyway? Iris fails to understand the twisted, malevolent idea of power dynamics that works in the minds of persons like Richard, who don’t need reason to subjugate and force themselves upon others, rendering them helpless to enjoy their so-called dominance over them. Richard reminds her that she wanted to take her life, and truly, Iris realizes as well that she no longer harbors those feelings. She is prepared to fight with fangs bared to save her own life—now that much of her mobility has returned to her body. 

Using a boat, Richard takes Iris to the middle of the river and prepares to throw her overboard with her hands tied, and Iris manages to appear vulnerable, remorseful enough for Richard to get a sense of pleasure, considering her helpless. In doing so, Richard lets down his guard and follows Iris’s last wish of fetching her son, Mateo’s toy, from her pocket. As Richard comes closer, Iris manages to take the knife from his buckle and stab him in the throat. A grievously injured Richard falls into the river after losing balance, and as he tries to climb into the boat once again, Iris takes the gun Richard had taken from the cop he murdered and shoots him to death. However, while shooting frantically, Iris has ended up creating holes in the boat, which lands her in the with her hands tied. However, miraculously enough, even with the hindrances, Iris manages to swim to the shore and lives to see another day. Even more surprisingly, Richard has swam to the shore as well, despite sustaining fatal injuries. 

Iris approaches a dying Richard to thank him, repeating the same words Richard had uttered to his dying girlfriend. At least as he dies a miserable death, Richard’s sick sense of power fantasy is shattered with Iris’ words. As Don’t Move ends, Iris seems to have changed her outlook towards life after such a transformative experience and probably has a newfound respect for getting a second chance at life. 


Siddhartha Das
Siddhartha Das
An avid fan and voracious reader of comic book literature, Siddhartha thinks the ideals accentuated in the superhero genre should be taken as lessons in real life also. A sucker for everything horror and different art styles, Siddhartha likes to spend his time reading subjects. He's always eager to learn more about world fauna, history, geography, crime fiction, sports, and cultures. He also wishes to abolish human egocentrism, which can make the world a better place.


 

 

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