A year after Megan Forrester (Lyndsy Fonseca) loses her family in a freak accident, she goes on a church camping retreat looking for some much-needed solace and rest. However, the scenic trip turns into terror when she and the group find themselves in a giant, man-eating spider’s hunting ground.

The plot synopsis isn’t wholly original. Just type in giant spider into Tubi’s search bar, and you’ll find a plethora of titles that vary in their quality from good too bad to downright ugly. Fortunately, Maclain Nelson’s “Don’t Move” is entertaining.

The opening scene establishes Megan’s loss and trauma when a fire breaks out in a haunted house attraction. It’s brutal, but the opening of the movie handles this tragedy with a lot of care and takes its time. Another movie would have wanted its opening to be more arachnid centric or themed.

There’s a mundane visual representation of Megan’s family that is haunting and heartbreaking. It’s an emotional gut punch that makes you feel like you’re watching a completely different movie and not one about a giant killer spider. That said, the rest of the movie never reaches the level of seriousness shown in the opening, but there’s still plenty of fun to be had.

Fonseca is a great, genuine leading lady in this movie. She can play vulnerable and distant yet snap when others treat her with kid gloves over her dead husband or son. Throughout the movie, we see her no-nonsense attitude, and it really comes through when she switches into survivalist mode.

Rapper Russell “Russ” Vitale is another standout in this movie as Ricky – Emma’s (Hunter King) ex-boyfriend with a checkered past. Even if the plot point about him being a drug runner is a bit of a mess, he has great chemistry with Fonseca and plays the tough guy with a lot of nuance and heart.

The group is led by Pastor Rizzo (Tom Cavanagh). I’m convinced honed his acting chops playing multiple versions of himself on The Flash. He can be upbeat and jovial and then tone it down to deliver a heartfelt line about looking out for Megan.

The rest of the cast doesn’t have much to do, and they’re pretty much stock characters. That’s par for the course in these kinds of movies, but the strength of “Don’t Move” is that they make all the characters likable. It also keeps the story moving briskly, at a lean 1 hour and 34 minutes.

Unfortunately, the spider’s screen time is kept to a minimum. We get a couple close shots detailing the spider’s multiple mandibles, but for the most part, its breakneck speed keeps it hidden in the dark. It’s interesting that the marketing of this movie describes the spider as a prehistoric arachnid, which never really comes up other than establishing that it might have been around since the 18th century when it could have just as easily been labeled a mutant spider.

The movie’s ending is a lot of fun albeit unexplained. “Don’t Move” doesn’t reinvent the animal attack story, but it does deliver a fun, sometimes clumsy, other times heartbreaking addition to the genre. In some ways, this is the “Deep Blue Sea” of giant spider movies.

Rating: 3.5/5.

---

The writer of this piece is: Laurence Almalvez
Laurence tweets from @IL1511

---