Stop me if you’ve heard this before. A young woman experiences a traumatic event and/or severe loss, and some time later she’s forced to face those feelings when a monstrous metaphor comes calling. While sometimes a natural, worthwhile part of a horror story, the whole grief/trauma shtick has become something of a tiresome trope in recent years. It doesn’t help that the initial loss is frequently fairly conventional, with a loved one dying of cancer or in some mundane accident.
Maclain Nelson’s new film, Don’t Move, while absolutely crawling with thrill-killing issues, opens with a loss that is anything but conventional or mundane.
Megan (Lyndsy Fonseca) is enjoying an amusement park’s offerings with her husband and young son. They hop into a haunted house ride while she watches over their belongings, but when a fire breaks out and the screaming starts, she springs into action. Megan saves some other riders but is unable to free her own family, and she’s instead left helpless as her son and husband are burned alive before her eyes.
One year later, she’s living a quiet life working in a church’s office. Memories of her family still fill her days, so she gives in after Pastor Rizzo’s (Tom Cavanagh) latest effort to invite her to a church camping trip over the weekend. They’re joined by the bus driver (Rob Riggle), the pastor’s daughter (Hunter King) and her boyfriend (Joseph Lee Anderson), and a young boy and his grandparents. Also along for the ride is an obnoxious prick named Ricky Vargas (Russ). They’ve barely set their tents up when the group is fractured by the arrival of a Volkswagen Beetle-sized spider determined to put their belief in the power of prayer to the ultimate test.
The opening sequence is maybe a little rough around the edges, but it’s easily among the most intense and horrifying setups to a grief-fueled horror film that I’ve seen in some time. Part of it stems from my own fear of being trapped by one of those ride safety bars – I legit try to block them with my arm when possible so they lock in with some wiggle room – but Fonseca also sells the hell out of the nightmare. Megan knows that she’s the one who suggested they check out the ride. She knows that she saved others but couldn’t save her own family, and she can’t get their harrowing screams out of her head. It’s horrifying. It’s fantastic.
And it’s by far the biggest high point in Don’t Move.
The film’s core issues can easily be broken down into three areas – the script, the spider, and Ricky fucking Vargas.
The script, co-written by Nelson and the source novel’s authors, James Murray & Darren Wearmouth, loses real steam after that stellar setup. The other characters and actors are mostly lacking in weight and charisma, and the handful that actually deliver real personality and entertainment value are killed off too quickly. It also struggles to mesh together Megan’s trauma and her current predicament in a way that justifies the repeated intrusion of the former into the latter. Chocolate and peanut butter, this ain’t.
The spider is every bit as weightless, and it’s not just because the CG lacks tangible thrills. There are some practical effects used rather sparingly, while too much of it is presented via CG that fails to convince that it’s part of the scene. The creature leaps between trees, hoists up a CG deer for a snack, and picks off the cast, but as a monster it leaves an impression similar to that of the CG blood and CG waterfall. That impression is boredom.
Finally, there’s Ricky. To be fair, the intentionally obnoxious side character whose rash actions and annoying attitude lead to the unnecessary deaths of others (and inevitably themselves, too) is arguably one of the tougher characters to get right in genre cinema. Most films are content in letting the character frustrate viewers before killing them off in a hopefully satisfying fashion, but Don’t Move takes a different tack: it makes Ricky a co-lead.
Not only does this undercut Megan’s journey and mute much of her dramatic arc, but it also leaves viewers stuck with a whole lot of Russ. Look, I’m not here to suggest that Russ, aka Russell Vitale, has some kind of blackmail material on the filmmakers. Would it explain making his annoying as hell character a co-lead and big hero? Perhaps. Would it justify the inclusion of two of Russ’ songs on the film’s soundtrack? Who’s to say.
Nelson made his feature debut 15 years ago with the horror/comedy Vamp U before shifting gears and directing 19 movies that Letterboxd really wants me to believe exist. Small Town Christmas, Christmas on My Mind, Christmas in Vienna, Haul Out the Holly, A Heidelberg Holiday, A Keller Christmas Vacation. His 21st feature sees him return to horror with a dash of comedy, but a busy (and clearly successful) career spent making made-for-TV romances has left his genre chops wanting.
Fonseca, who’s had her own run of supposedly real Christmas-themed films like Next Stop Christmas, Where Are You, Christmas?, Holiday Crashers, and Single on the 25th, actually does good work here before being let down by a script that loses interest in her. The other standouts, Riggle and Cavanagh, bring both the funny and the sincerity and subsequently inject a bit of life into the film while they’re onscreen.
A great opening sequence, some good/fun performances by Fonseca, Riggle, and Cavanagh, and a single effective jump scare that isn’t even related to the damn spider. That’s the net positive that Don’t Move has to offer, and it’s just not enough to warrant a rental, a purchase, or the loss of 90 minutes of your time.
Don’t Move is now available on Digital.
