Is Don't Move all blood and no substance?

Watching Don't Move seemed to be a tense and captivating journey, but the result was a frustrating experience. The trailer promised a terrifying thriller, with characters trapped in a claustrophobic environment and threatened by a supernatural entity. But instead of exploring this scenario in depth, the movie chooses a much easier route: senseless violence and mutilation scenes that, clearly, lead nowhere.

It's not that I have anything against explicit horror films—on the contrary. Classics like Saw and even recent productions like Don’t Breathe show that it's possible to work with graphic violence without sacrificing the narrative. But in Don't Move, gore seems to be the only priority. The story is overshadowed by a sequence of grotesque deaths that add nothing to the plot, leaving viewers with the feeling that everything was done purely with the intention of shocking.

The movie begins with an interesting concept. A group of friends, trapped and terrified, face an unknown threat in a limited space. This kind of plot is a ready-made recipe for creating tension, but Don't Move squanders this potential by not giving its characters room to develop. Who are they? What motivates their actions? These questions are never answered. Instead of an emotional bond with the audience, we are presented with disposable figures who are only there to die in the most bizarre ways possible.

In some scenes, I realized that the tension might work, but the predictability ruined any chance of surprise. The sound of footsteps on the floor up above them, the silence before the brutal attack—all these elements have been used so many times that they've lost their impact. Not to mention the expository dialogues, which almost give away the fate of each character before it happens.

While watching it, I found myself comparing Don't Move to the Terrifier franchise. Both seem to believe that graphic violence alone is enough to sustain a horror movie. And, as with Terrifier, I was mostly disappointed. Of course, there is an audience that is looking for just that—quick jump scares and disturbing scenes—but to me, horror is about more than that. It's about creating characters you want to save, situations that make your heart race and stories that stick with you even after the credits roll.

A clear example of the film's lack of balance is its total dependence on visual shock. In one particular scene, the claustrophobic space had enormous potential to intensify the psychological terror. But instead of exploring the fear of the unknown, the movie opts for a predictable and bloody approach. It's as if there was a list of “creative kills,” and the director was eager to check all the boxes, regardless of whether it made sense in the story.

Despite this, there's no denying that the practical effects team did an impressive job. The blood, the cuts, the wounds—everything looks frighteningly real. But is that enough to save the movie? To me, it wasn't. Without a solid story backing up these scenes, the impact is quickly lost, and it becomes nothing more than a parade of purposeless brutality.

Something that bothered me even more was how the movie seems to underestimate its audience. Titles like Saw show that it's possible to combine graphic violence with clever twists. In Don't Move, on the other hand, the plot is so shallow that it's clear that the intention was never to create something memorable, but just to deliver the “shock of the moment”. The problem is that without content, this type of empty shock can be very tiring.

In the end, I left the movies reflecting on how modern horror is divided between two strands: on the one hand, stories that balance depth and scares; on the other, productions that rely exclusively on the grotesque. Don't Move clearly chose the second option, but to me it fell somewhere in between. It lacked the courage to go beyond the gore and explore the true horror that could have emerged from its initial premise.

If the film had spent more time building characters or developing psychological tension, it would have been much more striking—and even more terrifying. However, by prioritizing visual impact above all else, Don't Move ended up becoming an experience that, ironically, wasn't impactful at all. While some viewers may find pleasure in the gory spectacle, to me, it lacked the essence of true horror: that panic that stays with us, haunting our mind long after the screen goes dark.