Kelsey Asbille's character Iris has a shocking final line in 'Don't Move'
The film, which premiered on Oct. 25, follows Iris (Kelsey Asbille) whose son Mateo (Denis Kostadinov) died in a hiking accident. While visiting her son's memorial on a cliff in the woods, the grieving mother plans to kill herself until a man by the name of Richard (Finn Wittrock) talks her off the ledge.
Viewers quickly learn that Richard's kindness is just a trap when he tases Iris, ties her up and injects her with a paralytic drug. Iris, desperate to survive the attack, must get as far away from her kidnapper as she can before the drug leaves her completely incapacitated.
Directors Brian Netto and Adam Schindler teamed up with legendary filmmaker Sam Raimi -- best known for directing the Spider-Man trilogy starring Tobey Maguire -- to produce the twisted thriller.
"[Kelsey Asbille] was fearless. Actors are expressive -- they use their bodies and their faces and their voices to create characters and we're taking away a lot of that for this performance," Netto told Geek Hard in October 2024.
He went on to explain that Asbille met with an anesthesiologist to gain an understanding of the drug and its effects. "We planned out every step of it, every sequence. It seems so simple just to lay there, but it's not," Netto added.
Here's everything to know about the end of Don't Move and if Iris survives the chilling events in the woods.
After Richard kills two people who try to save Iris -- Bill (Moray Treadwell), an old man with a cabin in the woods, and police officer Dontrell Carter (Daniel Francis) -- he resorts to burying his victim in a lake. Richard binds Iris' wrists with zip ties and places her in a rowboat. Once in deep water, he stops the boat and lets down an anchor.
Iris then lures Richard close enough to steal the knife in his belt, which she puts through his face. Angrily, he points a gun at her, but she's able to rock the boat hard enough to send him overboard. Iris grabs the gun and shoots her kidnapper. In the process, she puts two bullet holes in the side of the boat.
Iris soon finds herself underwater and bound at the wrists, but with her legs free, she's able to swim safely to the dock. Richard, who is fatally injured, also makes it to shore. The final moments of Don't Move show Iris standing over the serial killer before placing a knee on his chest and uttering the words: "Thank you."
These are the same two words Richard said to his college girlfriend as she died in the passenger seat of his car following a fatal crash. Earlier in the film, he'd explained to Iris that the accident awakened the killer inside him.
"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, okay, I do owe this man my life because I didn't want to fight for my life before I met him,' " Netto told Tudum in October 2024.
Raimi added: "I believe the line in the finest sense of it: 'Thank you for inspiring me to live again.' "
Don't Move isn't based on a true story. The directors developed the script during the COVID-19 pandemic and wanted to explore "feeling trapped," as Schindler told Screen Rant in October 2024.
"Just the idea of being immobile is a universal fear. And claustrophobia. It also juxtaposes that with this beautiful locale," he told What's on Netflix.
Don't Move is set in California but was filmed primarily in Bulgaria.
"Nu Boyana Studios' back door walks into the [woods], and they're allowed to shoot in the National Forest behind there. It gave us all the looks we needed in close proximity, which was a godsend," Schindler told Collider in October 2024.
Because Don't Move has very few indoor scenes, both directors agreed that the biggest challenge was continuity. External factors like the position of the sun or waves on the lake were "scary" to contend with due to a tight filming schedule, as Netto told ComicBook.
"The lake at the end was not closed off. People [would] be passing in the background on boats or canoes [and that creates waves]," he added. "It explains why people will go, 'Well, do we need to do this in this location? Can we have it on a backlot? Can we have it in a tank?' And a lot of it is because of control."
At the beginning of Don't Move, Iris is injected with a paralytic agent that takes full effect after 20 minutes and leaves her unable to move or speak for an hour. Asbille was tasked with a nearly motionless performance, which Raimi initially had concerns about.
"The script asked our actress to be still for so many minutes in the movie, and I was afraid our audience would become restless," he told Tudum. "But [Asbille] does such a great job of performing with her eyes and the most subtle movements of her face that it works splendidly."
Asbille added: "The script lays out the stages of paralysis, but there's an emotional experience and internal struggle that you have to convey, and you are so limited physically. That was the challenge, and it was fun to figure it out together."
Meanwhile, Whittrock shared with film reporter Maddi Koch that he rewatched The Silence of the Lambs to prepare for his serial killer role.
"I wasn't modeling myself after [Anthony Hopkins], but I did want to see how he tries to be a normal person and how he wants to connect to the person in front of him in his own twisted way," he said. "I did think of [Richard] as having different masks that he put on. For every person that he's with, he tries to transform."