Based on the best-selling horror novel by James Murray and Darren Wearmouth, Don’t Move is a new horror movie coming to theatres nationwide on Friday, September 11 (tickets are available now at dontmovemovie.com).
Also known as Murr, founder of Impractical Jokers, the long-running series airing on TBS and Comedy Central since 2011, James writes, produces, and stars in the movie. Don’t Move also features standout performances from Lyndsy Fonseca, Rob Riggle, Tom Cavanagh, and Russell “Russ” Vitale.
In Don’t Move, a church group’s annual retreat turns deadly when they wander into the wrong part of the Ozark wilderness, and something starts picking them off one by one. Deep in the forest, wrapped in a labyrinth of webs, the group is pursued by a terrifying prehistoric arachnid that hunts by vibration. When every step could be their last, they only have one choice: Don’t Move.
Murr may be best known as one of the stars of Impractical Jokers, but horror is another of his passions.
We recently had the good fortune to sit down for a chat with the comedy legend and, after comparing notes on our respective comic book collections, Murr discussed his journey from Impractical Jokers to horror novelist and filmmaker and the painstaking process of bringing the movie’s monstrous spider to life.
Murr also opens up about how one particularly terrifying Impractical Jokers punishment may have helped him tap into the fear experienced by Don’t Move‘s characters, and reveals a first look at him being dangled down the side of the Empire State Building in the show’s next season!
You can check out our full interview with Murr in the player below.
I’ve been a fan of yours thanks to Impractical Jokers for a long time. And of course people are going to think of you, and they’re going to associate you with that show. They’re not going to necessarily know that you’ve been writing horror for a while now. So when did this journey of this book and bringing this book to the big screen really begin for you?
I mean, Impractical Jokers, we’ve been making for 16 years and the whole time I’ve loved horror as much as I love comedy my whole life. So every single night my wife and I watch a different horror movie every night. No joke, right? For years and years and years. And so years ago I wrote my first horror novel. My degree is in fiction writing from college, and I had this idea for my first sci-fi horror novel, and it took me 15 years to get it published. And then it launched this entire literary career where I’ve gotten nine horror novels out in stores now. And the whole idea was writing these horror books in different genres.
I got three sci-fi horror, creature feature, Don’t Move, two serial killer thrillers, kids’ sci-fi comedy books. I got another horror book coming out next year and another serial killer thriller coming out in 2028. The whole idea was the hope that one day one of them might get turned into a movie. And so my fifth book, Don’t Move, did really well in stores, and it got turned into a movie, and it comes out in theaters nationwide September 11th all across America, and then international’s coming out as well soon. We’ll be announcing that shortly. But it’s my first, and the highest love, you know, is horror.
As an Impractical Jokers fan, I couldn’t help but think back to that punishment your buddy Quinn went through—the warehouse of tarantulas a while back. Was that where this idea began for this prehistoric spider that could hunt down all these poor people?
The idea came from just the top-line idea of, like, when you travel the world and certainly America- but when you travel the world, most of it’s empty. Like the cities are full of people, but most of the world, there’s nothing there. It’s just land, right? And just countless forests and mountains and valleys uninhabited by people. And it occurred to me, like, what if evolution had skipped this forest? Like the rise of humanity 200,000 years ago just passed by this forest, and evolution just stayed the same as it was millions of years ago, when creatures were 10 times the size of what they are now in modern times? What if there was this valley, this pristine kind of virgin forest where a creature had just gone under the radar, living underground and evolving separately? And this creature was this kind of terrifying, massive arachnid that has been around for millennia and can hunt its prey by the vibrations they make in the forest?
And you don’t even realise that it’s circling you by spitting invisible webs all around you. And anytime you brush through a web, lean against a web, it hones in on the vibration. It can hunt you down. Has it been doing it for millennia? What if a church group from Chicago wanders into the wrong woods? And that’s how Don’t Move starts. It’s kind of terrifying. And what would you do in that situation where any movement you make, once you realise what’s going on as characters in the movie, and you realise what the situation is, what the reality is that you’re living in, what would you do? What choice would you make if you’re being circled from all sides and cannot move? And literally any movement could lead to your death, you know? How do you think you’d get out of that situation? That’s where Don’t Move came from. Then maybe a little bit inspired by Q’s fear of spiders.
It is such a great premise. And the spider itself, you know, it’s a fantastic design. And I’d love to know, in terms of the VFX and the design process, how involved were you in order to translate the spider from the page to the screen in the way that obviously you would be happy with?
I mean, our graphic design team was from the UK. So there you go. And no, heavily involved in every single step. Not just the creature design, what the hair looks like, the colouring of it. Not just that, the fangs. Not just that, but also the physics of it. How this spider moves, how it might move similarly or differently than other spiders in reality, you know? Heavily involved. And we also have a fair amount of practical effects in the movie, you know? Because for me it was important to capture the fear of the moment on the actors’ faces and what they felt. So, like the opening scene in the movie, which begins pretty horrifically when our lead character, Lyndsy Fonseca, loses her family in this tragedy that seems survivable. And she makes every right decision, and they still die, you know? That’s the kind of horror I love.
When you make all the right choices, every logical step that a rational person would take, sometimes it works out for you, but oftentimes it does not. You know what I mean? And she still loses her entire family. But in that scene, that haunted house is real. We lit it on fire. The people on fire in the haunted house were real actors, real stunt people on fire. So when Lyndsy’s reacting to her family moving toward this wall of flame, she felt the fire on her body. She saw other stunt performers on fire in front of her. Her fear is real on screen, you know? That’s why you’ve got to see it in the movie theaters because you will feel the hairs on your arm. I’m getting goosebumps thinking about the scene. You’ll feel it, man.
And the spider itself, the design—there are some shots in the movie that are so damn realistic. Having been on set every day, I cannot tell that the spider is not there. Because our team did just a masterful job in production and post, and made sure everything was perfect. Like, the lighting is perfect. We did high-res 3D scans. It slowed us way down, but you had to do it for every single shot. Every time you move the camera, another 3D scan. Move the camera again, another 3D scan, with multiple cameras scanning every angle in 3D from different points of view to make sure that in animation it is dead-on perfect. The colouring, the lighting, the shadows, the movement of the creature. There are some shots I cannot tell are not real. I can’t tell, you know? It’s pretty damn good.
How important was it for you and Darren Wearmouth to be involved with writing the script and not to just pass off your book to another writer who could do their own thing with it? And then to have Maclain Nelson as a collaborator as writer and director, too.
The good thing is my buddy Maclain is my friend for 25 years. I was literally in his bridal party and vice versa. And he’s just a dear, dear friend, and I knew I could trust him with the material. The good thing is, when you write a book, you’ve gone through months of writing and working through logic flaws and character development and dialogue. And I think that’s one of the things Impractical Jokers has always taught us: we write dialogue for a living. I’m improvising every single day on camera with people I’ve never interacted with and jumping into other people’s lives. I’ve played everyone you can imagine. I’ve been a dentist, a doctor, a cashier, a waiter. I’ve done every job on the planet at least for one day on Impractical Jokers for 16 years. So part of our skill is not just jumping into other people’s lives, but also mentally and in dialogue knowing how to sound like them as well. So by the time a book gets published, it’s already a very, very polished piece of art, right? Like the characters are fully fleshed out and developed. The dialogue is dead on. Every word choice has been meticulously crafted through multiple revisions and rounds of the book before it gets printed and published in stores around the world.
So, adapting the screenplay from Maclain, not only do I trust him creatively, but he had great source material to build off of. And many times, the dialogue is just lifted from the book. And what he added was a variable that’s not in the book, which is his background in directing a lot of rom-coms. He’s done dozens of rom-coms for Hallmark Channel. Big-budget movies. They’re like eight- to 10-million-dollar movies. And he’s done dozens of them. And what he added to the screenplay, which is not in the book, is an incredible level of heart. That’s not in the book—it’s just terrifying. It’s just a creature feature. It’s just brutal and relentless. He added a lot more heart to the characters and the scenes. And then also the actors just brought it to life. Like, Lyndsy is so likeable, Russ is so charming on screen, Riggle is so funny. The book is not funny, but the movie has really funny moments in it because the cast brings that naturally with their performance. So it’s a rare situation where I, as the writer of the book, co-writer of the book, and co-writer of the screenplay, can say that the movie’s better. You know what I mean? Which is weird because usually the book is better than the movie. I think we went the other way with this one, thankfully.
And you know, with Impractical Jokers, because you’ve been in some really scary, dicey situations…
Man. I don’t know if you saw this. It hasn’t aired yet. It’ll be the mid-season premiere next year. But last week—we just finished filming the season a few days ago—last week they dressed me as a human mop and made me step foot off the top of the Empire State Building from the 103rd floor, outside the building, hang by a rope, and I used my own body to clean the outside glass. And I rappelled down to the 90th floor. No one on earth has ever done that, ever. It was the most terrifying moment of my life.
That perfectly brings me to my final question, actually. I imagine going through an insane experience like that must really give you—you said you’re a horror fan—a better grasp of how to tap into the emotion of these characters when they are in this terrifying situation?
I’ll show you something. I probably can’t show this, but screw it. So we’re editing that piece right now, and the head of our post just sent me raw footage of—oh, wait, it’s not here. Wait, is that it? Oh, here. I’m sorry. Here, here. [Shows footage]
Oh, man. Yeah, I’ve got no idea how you can do that.
I’m crying hysterically and just repeating the phrase ‘oh my God, oh my God.” That’s—she sent me the clip of the first moment I stepped off the Empire State. Yeah, so I think we can tap into fear very well.
Thank you so much for taking the time to talk about the film. I had such a great time watching this. It’s coming along at a perfect time with this horror resurgence we’re having with films like Obsession and Backrooms, and I can’t wait for people to check it out on the big screen.
Thank you, man. If you have the means, please go to dontmovemovie.com to get your tickets. For an indie movie like ours, it’s all based on that first opening weekend. We’re literally booking new theaters every day. At 12:30 last night, I got a text from our team saying two more theaters came on board. Like it’s that—every hour another text: this theater came on board in Texas, this theater. It’s literally that kind of grassroots movement of horror, you know. So if you have the means, get your tickets at dontmovemovie.com or go to AMC Theaters website to get your tickets. And it would mean the world to me. And I’m travelling America all of September, popping into movie theaters to surprise audiences. I’m hitting hundreds of screens throughout September to walk in at no matter what point in the movie the lights will come up. I get there, I walk in, take a picture with everybody and thank them for coming. Because in my mind, if you spent five bucks a gallon on gas and got a babysitter that night and took your hard-earned time and money to go see our movie in theaters the way it was meant to be seen, I want to be there personally to thank you. So if you have the means, go to dontmovemovie.com to get your tickets now.
Don’t Move arrives in theaters on September 11. Tickets are now available at dontmovemovie.com.