There are an abundance of films that are keen on telling us things we shouldn’t do. Don’t Breathe, Don’t Look Now, Don’t Say a Word, Don’t Hang Up, and possibly one of the more obscure utterings Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead.

Well let’s hope you’re sitting comfortably, as this new horror thriller doesn’t want us to move at all.

Iris (Kelsey Asbille) has left her husband in bed and gone out early to a hiking trail. She’s there for two reasons: to visit her son’s shrine at the top of the trail, and then to jump off the mountain and end her life.

She is interrupted in the latter by Richard (Finn Wittrock), who just so happens to be out and about that early too. He talks to Iris in a manner that he understands her intentions, and says just enough to change her mind.

She catches up with him again at the car park, where she quickly becomes uncomfortable, and she has every right to be. Out of nowhere, he shoots her with a stun gun, and quickly secures her, bound, in the back of his car.

Iris isn’t the defenceless female he thinks she is, and puts up a fight from the back seat, causing the car to crash. Although it appears she might have the upper hand, he informs her that during their fight, he managed t inject her with a paralysing agent, which will take full effect in about 20 minutes.

If Iris is to die, she wants to on her own terms, but is there any way for her to escape?

This is only the second feature to be directed by Brian Netto and Adam Schindler, and the first that they’ve directed together, and you get the sense that the pair are relatively new to the art.

Although the premise is an all too familiar one, of a man feeling the need to murder women, the twist comes by way of the injection, and the following 20 minute countdown. It’s an interesting gimmick, but one the pair don’t appear to utilise to its full potential. It really is the perfect tool to remind the audience that time is literally running out for the protagonist, who only has a small window of time before her body will shut down. And yet, the directors are quite frivolous with time, slowing it down with some pretty images of the landscape, and draining the film of any anxiety it promised.

And it’s this lack of pacing that is an issue throughout. It essentially is a cat and mouse tale, out in the woods, with no one else around. But there’s a significant lack of tension from beginning to end, and obvious opportunities to play on it, like a subversive soundtrack, are missing.

There are also just the two of them for the majority of the film, and you get a sense that they are both let down by an under-performing script. Yes we get it that she is grieving, and that he’s probably a psycho of some sort, but their time together is disappointingly mild.

One of the real positives are the special effects that, although brief, are pretty impressive, and make the kind of impact the film is dying for.

Unfortunately then the film takes a well-trodden story and fails to inject it with any originality or creativity, making it all too easy to move on from.