How DoesDon't MoveEnd? Unpacking the Netflix Thriller's Chilling Final Line

Mar. 15, 2025

Netflix

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 filmmakerSam Raimi— best known for directing theSpider-Mantrilogy starringTobey 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 toldGeek Hardin 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.

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.

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 toldTudumin October 2024.

Raimi added: “I believe the line in the finest sense of it: ‘Thank you for inspiring me to live again.’ ”

“Just the idea of being immobile is a universal fear. And claustrophobia. It also juxtaposes that with this beautiful locale,” he toldWhat’s on Netflix.

“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 toldColliderin October 2024.

“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.”

What have Finn Wittrock and Kelsey Asbille said about their characters?

“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 reporterMaddi Kochthat he rewatchedThe Silence of the Lambsto 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.”

source: people.com