Never Let Go (2024) Lionsgate/Horror-Thriller RT: 101 minutes Rated R (strong violent content, grisly images) Director: Alexandre Aja Screenplay: Kevin Coughlin and Ryan Grassby Music: Rob Cinematography: Maxime Alexandre Release date: September 20, 2024 (US) Cast: Halle Berry, Percy Daggs IV, Anthony B. Jenkins, William Catlett, Stephanie Lavigne, Matthew Kevin Anderson, Cadence Compton, Mila Morgan.
Rating: ***
I’m going to start my review of Never Let Go by revealing a spoiler. You’ll understand why when you read it. The dog you see in the trailer makes it to the end of the film. No harm comes to the pooch, but he almost becomes the family’s next meal at one point. The important thing is the dog doesn’t die. This will undoubtedly make the dog lovers in the audience very happy. I know I was relieved.
Never Let Go is the latest horror-thriller from Alexandre Aja who burst onto the scene two decades ago with the impressive French slasher Haute Tension (known as High Tension in the US). He followed that up with a damn good remake of The Hills Have Eyes (2006) and quasi-remake Piranha 3D (2010). His previous film, the 2019 gator thriller Crawl, was a lot of fun. He gets serious with Never Let Go which concerns a mother trying to protect her young sons from an evil force that’s been after her for as long as she can remember.
The unnamed mom (Berry, Monster’s Ball) lives in an old house in the middle of the woods with her twin sons Nolan (Daggs, The Last Days of Ptolemy Gray) and Samuel (Jenkins, Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist). They live way off the grid because she’s says something evil is waiting to get them. She has the boys convinced that the world has ended due to an infestation of evil and the only reason they’re not infected is because their house is a safe place. It protects them. She has a lot of rules and rituals, the most important being they must all stay tied to a rope connected to their house. It’s their life line. If they let go, the evil will get them.
At this point, you’re probably asking what the evil is. Good question. Too bad I don’t have a definite answer. It could very well be that some malevolent spirit is really out to get Halle’s character. She frequently sees them. Ah, there’s the rub. She’s the only one who sees them. Her sons don’t. What does this mean? It means it could all be a figment of her imagination, a manifestation of mental illness that she’s passing on to her sons. It could also be the aftereffects of an abusive childhood. Whatever it is, it’s a f***ed up way to live.
There comes a time in every child’s life when they start to question what their parents tell them. That’s what happens here. Nolan starts to have doubts about what he’s been told all his life. Maybe it is safe to go out in the world without the rope. Samuel, on the other hand, clings to his mother’s teachings. Why would she lie to them? It becomes an even bigger issue when they run out of food and are reduced to eating fried tree bark. It’s either take a chance on the world or starve to death? Thank God the dog has the good sense to run away before…. well, you know.
Never Let Go is a fairly effective horror-thriller. Aja makes excellent use of his single setting and the surrounding woods. He imbues the film with a palpable sense of claustrophobia by making the woods outside look threatening and ominous. He also toys with our minds by showing something threatening and not really letting on whether the characters see it or not. He uses background movement to great advantage by drawing our eye towards a movement or scary image before the characters see it (if they see it at all). BTW, Mom sees some truly horrifying things. Aja gets a lot of help from cinematographer Maxime Alexandre who he worked with on Crawl. Together, they show a real mastery of film language.
In the lead, Berry does a good job as a character we can never get a real handle on. She’s definitely disturbed in some way, but is she actually delusional? Daggs and Jenkins do a fine job as well. You can see how her illness (if that’s what it is) affects them. It’s part of their being whether they know it or not. It’s too bad Aja doesn’t anything with them being twins. You would think he’d explore the strong bond that exists between twins, but it’s really only mentioned in passing.
Never Let Go is a decent survival-type horror films that stumbles thematically. Simply put, it tries to do too much and ends up not doing enough. It has too many ideas that go unexplored- e.g. is it an allegory for COVID? By the end, you’re not sure what to make of Never Let Go. It’s an interesting, legitimately eerie film that effectively unsettles the viewer. Maybe its power comes from not being sure what just happened? I thought I had it all figured out going in, but know I’m having second thoughts. That, my friends, is the sign of a good movie.
