Don't Move answers the question: who would you rather meet in the woods?

In May 2024, a viral question circulated on social media, sparking debates and discussions: if you, a woman, were alone in the middle of the woods, would you rather encounter a man or a bear? A year earlier, screenwriters T.J. Cimfel and David White had shared their take on the topic. And they’re not even women. The answer today – though even before, most women surveyed seemed to fear meeting a friendly Winnie the Pooh character less – might be directly Don’t Move, a film directed by Brian Netto and Adam Schindler, which quickly rose to the top of Netflix’s most-watched titles. The story begins exactly like the question itself: a woman, Irish, played by Kelsey Asbille, finds herself alone on a high cliff near a green area early one morning, surrounded by rocks to climb and tall trees casting shadows everywhere. It's there that she lost her son Mateo due to an oversight, and it's also there she’s considering ending her life. Enter Richard, played by Finn Wittrock, whom some might recognize from repeated appearances in the American Horror Story anthology or, for keen eyes, as Emma Stone’s boyfriend in his five-minute screen time in Damien Chazelle’s marvelous La La Land. After a brief interaction, Irish steps back, and the two head toward their cars. At that moment, the real nightmare begins for her. 

Using a plot device involving helplessness, injecting a substance into the protagonist that paralyzes her for about an hour, both viewers and the protagonist find themselves at the mercy of the madness of Richard/Andrew, experiencing a type of immobility that is the scariest part of the entire movie. It’s a true survival movie where, with limbs going numb and her voice fading, Irish must do everything to escape her captor, who, in type and psychology, turns out to be a distant relative of the serial killer Josh Hartnett portrayed in last summer’s thriller, M. Night Shyamalan's Trap. In this thriller/horror, instincts emerge, laying the groundwork for the story: who decides if we’re meant to live or not? When the film begins, we see Irish ready to throw herself from the same cliff where her son fell (another aspect that drives the movie’s pace: trauma surfaces right away, there’s no need to wait to uncover it). She’s ready to end her life. So why, if a man paralyzes her with the intent to kill, does she suddenly become so determined to stay alive? Don’t Move focuses on self-determination, paralleling the natural instinct to find shelter in dangerous situations. In this film, we see that survival is not simply a human inclination; it’s part of our choices that should never be left to others, especially if it’s a killer who, in witnessing his victims' final breaths, feels a divine connection in which “God was me.” There's no higher or more violent way to feel superior than when one has the power to give life or, as in this case, take it away.

Another truth is that one should never put the words woods and Sam Raimi together, as the outcome is never good. For fictional characters, of course. The director of Evil Dead, whose cabin in the middle of nowhere became iconic, is the producer of Don’t Move, as he was (executively) of the fifth installment in the chronological order of his saga, which began in 1981. Here too, other affinities: the ending of Netto and Schindler's film mirrors the opening scene of Evil Dead Rise by Lee Cronin, where a lake and a wooden walkway over water serve as the stage of fate for the protagonists, though one involves a demonic possession, while in the other the “demon” is merely a man. With the premise of Don’t Move, simplified even by the killer as simply being “in the wrong place at the wrong time”, Netflix's film can be forgiven for a few flaws in exchange for the mix of thriller and horror it offers. A work that could teach us that it’s never a good idea to go into the woods alone, but it would be even better if it reminded the many outraged that it’s not so absurd for a woman to prefer encountering a bear over a psychopath, given he might just want to spend the weekend with you “braiding your hair.”