Spiders are no laughing matter in Don’t Move, the upcoming horror movie from “Impractical Jokers” star James “Murr” Murray and director Maclain Nelson (Vamp U). 

Don’t Move adapts the 2020 novel of the same name from co-authors Murray and Darren Wearmouth, unleashing a prehistoric arachnid upon an unsuspecting church group’s annual retreat. It’s massive, and it hunts by vibration.

The creature feature is the first under Murray’s new banner, Impractical Studios, designed to bring his authored works and love of horror to mainstream audiences.

Murray has big plans for Impractical Studios; the multihyphenate talent teases an adaptation of his holiday slasher novel as he explains the origins of his new label. “The idea for that was I’ve written nine thriller novels with major publishing houses: three with Harper Collins, three with Penguin Random House, two with Blackstone, two with St. Martin’s Press. Big publishing houses. The idea being that I would create the IP, create the big ideas.

“I love horror so much, and I love writing thrillers. I have a degree in English and literature. So, the idea was that I would create the worlds I want to see on film and then eventually partner with people like McLean, who adapted Don’t Move into the screenplay. Don’t Move comes out this September, and then next year, we’re going to make You Better Watch Out, my serial killer thriller I wrote, and then so-and-so forth down the line.“

Murray Thinks the Movie is Better Than the Book

T-Pain and Russ in Don’t Move

Don’t Move wasn’t the first novel Murray authored, but it was the first of his books that longtime friend Maclain Nelson read. That proved to be the true origin of this creature feature. “I actually felt like a bad friend because he’d written all these novels, and I’m like, ‘Buddy, I feel bad. I haven’t read any of your books,” Nelson tells Bloody Disgusting. “And I said, ‘What should I start with?‘ I was at his house one weekend, he looked through all the books he wrote, and he’s like, ‘Here, take Don’t Move.‘ He’s like, ‘I think that’s a quick read. I think you’ll like it.‘“

Nelson fell instantly for the novel: “So, I disappeared for four hours. He thought I left, and I just read it. I read it in one sitting. The story really caught me. I thought it was so fun. It really reminded me of one of my favorite movies, Tremors, in that it follows this group of people. Some sci-fi is happening. They don’t know what it is. They have to figure it out together. They have to come together as a community. I said, ‘Man, James, this is a movie. We got to make this.‘ He’s like, ‘Well, I do TV. What do we do?‘ And I said, ‘Let me take a stab at the script. If you like it, let’s move.‘ I sat down, really ingested the book, and a month later, we had a screenplay.“

Not only did Nelson adapt Murray and Wearmouth’s novel, but he also directed the feature, which Murray is the first to praise for surpassing his material.

“I hate to say it, but the movie’s better than the book, which never happens. It never happens.“

Murray credits Nelson’s direction especially. “Largely because of Maclain Nelson’s skills with actors and with heart and emotion; he added a whole layer to the movie that’s not in the book, which is that it’s got real heart. You care for these characters; you actually want these people to survive, and they often don’t, and it really is heartbreaking. So it’s got a lot of heart, a lot of depth, and it’s really funny. The book is not funny. The book is a slaughterhouse because Darren and I love killing people. But the movie has a lot more heart and comedy than the book did. So, I hate to say it. I love to say it, but the movie’s better than the book. And I can say it, I’m the author.“

Nelson emphasizes that while Don’t Move does have heart and humor, it’s horror through and through. “We obviously have a shift in the movie where it really gets real, but it’s supposed to be these people in this community coming together to be in the woods. So there should be some light moments. We’re not cracking jokes near the end when things are getting really serious, but to set everything up and to get to know people, you want to be there with them, and it just endears you to them as one by one,” Nelson explains.

Murray agrees. “I love horror even more than comedy,” he tells BD. “It’s so weird that I have been doing ‘Impractical Jokers’ for so, so long. But for me, what makes a horror movie great is when smart people make good decisions facing impossible odds, and sometimes it works out, and sometimes it doesn’t. When characters on screen are making the dumbest decisions possible, I check out as a viewer. I’m like, come on, man, no one is this stupid. So one of the hallmarks of all of my books, and then Don’t Move as well, is that these people are smart people and they’re making good choices and they still lose, but sometimes they win. That’s a good, compelling movie today.“

Smart Characters, Impossible Odds

The full cast of Don’t Move

Don’t Move, Murray and Nelson tease, comes out of the gate swinging. Murray praises Nelson’s changes to the book’s cold open, “It’s pure horror. Our lead character, Megan Forrester, who’s played by Lyndsy Fonseca, who is amazing and so charismatic and so warm and likable, goes through an unspeakable tragedy that unfolds rapid fire. It is fast-paced. It’s one of the rides at an amusement park, the swing ride just goes out of control and groans and creeks as people start spinning around in the chairs, they can’t get out.“

Fonseca leads an ensemble cast alongside Russell “Russ” Vitale. Tom Cavanagh (The Flash), Hunter King (Life in Pieces), Rob Riggle (The Hangover), and Joseph Lee Anderson (Young Rock) also star. Expect plenty of cameos including T-Pain, Matt Biedel, and “Impractical Jokers” member Brian Quinn.

The film marks the first lead role for Russ, who immediately won over Murray and Nelson. “The first time I Zoomed with him and just his voice, the quality of his voice, the swagger, his look, I was like, ‘This is Ricky Vargas,'” Nelson says. “Ricky in the book, he’s joining the church camping trip. Imagine the type of people. I grew up very religious. I went on a ton of church camping trips, and never once did a guy like Ricky Vargas come on the church camping trip. So, it needed to be this perfect human, the perfect character that you don’t expect and shows up, but has this likability and ability to ingratiate himself with the very different crowd, but then also you don’t know what he’s doing. He’s got some shady motives. And man, we have a new movie star out there because he took it all on.“

Competing for star status on Don’t Move, of course, is the behemoth monster hunting human prey.

How Real Spiders Inspired Don’t Move’s Prehistoric Arachnid

Don’t expect to see the prehistoric monster in its full glory ahead of release, but Nelson’s approach to designing the arachnid might induce arachnophobia all the same. The director studied spiders up close for months, picking different features from a variety of species for maximum skin-crawling terror.

“For six months, this was my research for the spider, because we created our own way on how it moves and whatnot. I would be in my backyard, I would lie down on this cot, and I would just look straight down at the grass. I was shocked at how many spiders would just come across anytime you are outside. I’d watch the spiders, how they move, some that would do a little thing and then hop and do a little thing and then hop. I saw this one that had these crazy crab arms, the front four were way longer, and the back ones were shorter.

“I just started documenting and making characteristics of all these different spiders that I liked and that were creepy. We built with our CGI artists all the creepiest little intricacies of all these different spiders and created our own kind of super spider.”

“It’s like an alien,” Murray says of this movie’s monster. “It really is. It moves like an alien. It doesn’t think as we do. There’s no reasoning with it. And that’s what I love about Don’t Move, the book and the movie. The horror mimics my favorite horror movie all the time, The Descent, which I think is brilliant. It mimics that kind of horror in the same kind of ways. It works on three levels: It’s human versus the other, which is this creature that cannot be reasoned with, can’t be logicked with it whatsoever. You can’t talk your way around it, right? It’s completely alien.“

He continues, “Then it’s human versus each other because of the inner dynamics of the group. It’s a group setting. They have different motives. They have different pasts that conflict, and it’s the constant conflict between those personalities and then the human versus, in this case, herself. It’s Megan Forrester versus her own trauma that she went through at the beginning of the movie. She’s got to overcome her own past in order to succeed and win and survive at the end.“

That neither Nelson nor Murray is known for horror makes this feature all the more rewarding for the pair, who forged their own path in getting Don’t Move made after a lot of rejections. “Maclain Nelson, Jordan to my Peele,” Murray jokes, acknowledging that studios still haven’t seemed to fully recognize how well horror and comedy go hand-in-hand, particularly in the comedian-to-horror-filmmaker pipeline.

“Not a lot of people believed in this. It’s why we had to do it ourselves. It’s why we didn’t get a studio to back it. We had to go prove it ourselves. We didn’t get invited to the party. We had to create our own,” Nelson says.

Murray agrees, “That’s what indie horror movie making is all about: doing it. I’m really proud of that. That’s what I’m most excited about, that moment before the first time it premiered since September in that first theater, sitting there next to my buddy, my friend for life, and saying, ‘God dammit, man. We made it. We made a horror movie, and it’s good, and I think people will like it.’ And that should be celebrated, man. It’s so hard to do.“

Tickets are on sale now for the Kansas City premiere at the Midland Theater on September 8 and the Los Angeles premiere at the TCL Chinese Theater on September 9, ahead of Don’t Move‘s theatrical release on September 11.