It’s a universal nightmare: You’re stuck in a scary situation and you can’t move. Your arms and legs are frozen in place, your body a temperate icicle, and all you can do is blink. That’s the horror story that Brian Netto and Adam Schindler’s Don’t Move taps into. In the trailer above, you see the protagonist, Iris, played by Kelsey Asbille, struggling to run, hide, fight, and simply survive in the wilderness — with a would-be killer on her trail.

“[Don’t Move] is a story of a woman who finds herself in a situation where she’s struggling, she’s at a low point,” co-director Netto tells Tudum. At its center is Iris, a mother grieving a tragic loss. “All of a sudden, she finds herself dosed with a paralytic, and her body is going to slowly but surely shut down. Now she’s in a fight for her life.”

That paralytic agent is injected into Iris’ body by a stranger she meets on a hiking trail as she’s navigating a difficult moment. With 20 minutes on the clock until the drug kicks in, she’s up against a deadly challenge: Iris’ body is shutting down, and her pursuer is tight on her trail.

Produced by legendary director Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead), Don’t Move is electrifying — and surprisingly emotional. “To read the script itself was like a nonstop page-turner,” Raimi tells Tudum. “It’s a moving experience, especially for a suspense film.”

So sit still, keep your eyes on the screen, blink if you’ve got any questions, and read on to learn everything there is to know about Don’t Move.

What is Don’t Move about?

A grieving woman hoping to find solace deep in an isolated forest encounters a stranger who injects her with a paralytic agent. As the agent gradually takes over her body, she must run, hide, and fight for her life before her entire nervous system shuts down.

The film’s very premise posed a challenge for the filmmakers. “The script asked our actor to be still for so many minutes in the movie, and I was afraid,” producer Sam Raimi says. “I was concerned that the audience would become restless, but the directors handled it so well, it becomes more and more suspenseful.”

Directors Brian Netto and Adam Schindler (50 States of Fright, Delivery: The Beast Within) built the concept alongside the film’s writers, T.J. Cimfel and David White (Shut In). “The challenge we said to them was, ‘We would love for it to be [in] real time,’ ” Netto says. “We love films that do that.” 

Running at roughly 85 minutes, Don’t Move unfolds along the same span of time that its characters are experiencing. “You feel like you are literally along for this ride moment by moment,” Finn Wittrock told Netflix. “That’s something I hadn’t really seen before in a movie, especially something like this with this sort of level of darkness.”

At every turn, Iris is forced to navigate around a new, seemingly impossible obstacle, often with very little range of motion. “It’s a propulsive, stripped-down thriller that manages to feel very personal at times,” Asbille tells Tudum. “That’s what resonated with me, fighting desperately to overcome something that has left you feeling paralyzed.”

Netto and Schindler delighted in ramping up the film’s tension in every scene. “We charged the writers with painting themselves into a corner,” Schindler adds. “Every sequence we’re like, ‘OK, how do we make it tougher on her? How do you paint yourself into a corner? And then how do you get yourself out of that?’ ” 

When will Don’t Move be on Netflix? 

Don’t Move is now streaming on Netflix.

Who’s in the cast of Don’t Move?

The cast of Don’t Move includes:

• Kelsey Asbille (Yellowstone, Fargo)
• Finn Wittrock (American Horror Story: Hotel, The Big Short) 
• Moray Treadwell (The Witcher: Blood Origin, Downton Abbey)
• Daniel Francis (Bridgerton, Small Axe)

To portray Iris, Asbille had to tap into dark and often difficult emotions. But there was an added obstacle: performing without the use of most of her body language. “I really had to depend heavily on [Netto and Schindler], especially when it came to the paralysis and what translates on-screen versus what doesn’t,” she says. “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.”

Wittrock was in awe of his co-star’s ability to convey complex emotions with almost no physical movement. “Kelsey had this incredible challenge, which was like she had to express so much with hardly any ability to use her body, which is generally what we use to express ourselves. Watching the movie, I was really so impressed by how much she was able to communicate.”

“They were very giving on set,” Schindler says of Asbille and Wittrock, adding: “Finn was very introspective and always mining for different things. I thought it was really fun to watch.”

Netto agrees. “The two of them worked together so well, they were just great,” he says. “We really lucked out.”