{"id":4157,"date":"2024-09-22T03:52:51","date_gmt":"2024-09-22T03:52:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=4157"},"modified":"2024-10-19T21:47:44","modified_gmt":"2024-10-20T01:47:44","slug":"never-let-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/09\/22\/never-let-go\/","title":{"rendered":"Never Let Go"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Never Let Go<\/strong> (2024)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Lionsgate\/Horror-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 101 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong violent content, grisly images)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Alexandre Aja\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Kevin Coughlin and Ryan Grassby\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Rob\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Maxime Alexandre\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: September 20, 2024 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Halle Berry, Percy Daggs IV, Anthony B. Jenkins, William Catlett, Stephanie Lavigne, Matthew Kevin Anderson, Cadence Compton, Mila Morgan.<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019m going to start my review of Never Let Go<\/strong> by revealing a spoiler. You\u2019ll 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\u2019s next meal at one point. The important thing is the dog doesn\u2019t die. This will undoubtedly make the dog lovers in the audience very happy. I know I was relieved.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Never Let Go<\/strong> 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<\/strong> which concerns a mother trying to protect her young sons from an evil force that\u2019s been after her for as long as she can remember.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The unnamed mom (Berry, Monster\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019re 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\u2019s their life line. If they let go, the evil will get them.<\/p>\n

\u00a0At this point, you\u2019re probably asking what the evil is. Good question. Too bad I don\u2019t have a definite answer. It could very well be that some malevolent spirit is really out to get Halle\u2019s character. She frequently sees them. Ah, there\u2019s the rub. She\u2019s the only<\/em> one who sees them. Her sons don\u2019t. What does this mean? It means it could all be a figment of her imagination, a manifestation of mental illness that she\u2019s passing on to her sons. It could also be the aftereffects of an abusive childhood. Whatever it is, it\u2019s a f***ed up way to live.<\/p>\n

\u00a0There comes a time in every child\u2019s life when they start to question what their parents tell them. That\u2019s what happens here. Nolan starts to have doubts about what he\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Never Let Go<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In the lead, Berry does a good job as a character we can never get a real handle on. She\u2019s 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\u2019s what it is) affects them. It\u2019s part of their being whether they know it or not. It\u2019s too bad Aja doesn\u2019t anything with them being twins. You would think he\u2019d explore the strong bond that exists between twins, but it\u2019s really only mentioned in passing.<\/p>\n

Never Let Go<\/strong> 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\u2019re not sure what to make of Never Let Go<\/strong>. It\u2019s 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\u2019m having second thoughts. That, my friends, is the sign of a good movie.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Never Let Go (2024)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Lionsgate\/Horror-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 101 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong violent content, grisly images)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Alexandre Aja\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Kevin Coughlin and Ryan Grassby\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Rob\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Maxime Alexandre\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: September 20, 2024 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Halle Berry, Percy Daggs IV, Anthony B. Jenkins, William Catlett, Stephanie Lavigne, Matthew Kevin Anderson, Cadence Compton, Mila Morgan. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5112,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Never-Let-Go-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4157"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5113,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4157\/revisions\/5113"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}