Director Alexandre Aja’s Never Let Go is a balancing act. The audience is told up front that this is a story full of fantastical nightmares… but is it? The source of this information is questionable in terms of both motive and sanity, which eats away at trust, but consequences for losing faith are extreme. It’s a tense push and pull, and along with some bold and impressive performances and an unrelenting atmosphere that makes you think any horrific twist is possible, it’s a grisly surprise.
Never Let Go
Release Date: September 20, 2024
Directed By: Alexandre Aja
Written By: Kevin Coughlin and Ryan Grassby
Starring: Halle Berry, Percy Daggs IV and Anthony B. Jenkins
Rating: R for strong violent content and grisly images
Runtime: 101 minutes
Based on an original screenplay by Kevin Coughlin and Ryan Grassby, it’s a film about parenthood and the passionate desire to protect one’s children from the terrors of the world, and it keeps your brain buzzing throughout as you question just about everything the story throws at you. The movie is ever-enhanced by an extreme and intense turn from Halle Berry, whose dedicated performance is fantastic source of ambiguity, and Percy Daggs IV and Anthony B. Jenkins prove to be capable young performers playing boys who are starting to question their mother’s strict domestic rules.
Sam (Jenkins) and Nolan (Daggs) are twin brothers who have spent their entire lives with their mother June (Berry) in a secluded cabin built in the middle of a vast wilderness. The home was originally built by June’s parents, who constructed it as a means of warding off a horrible evil that has plagued the world, and Sam and Nolan are taught that they can never let go of their connection to the house. When they go out daily looking for food, they all must be tethered with a rope that is anchored in a specially built crawl space.
The family is resourceful and practiced in survival, their daily searches for food aided by their pet dog and cupboard stocked for hard times, but the small world begins to deteriorate amid a rough winter. With the boys maturing and getting hungrier and hungrier each day, they begin to debate whether or not their mother has actually been telling them the truth or if there is something more sinister going on.
Never Let Go keeps you guessing, and that keeps you on the edge of your seat.
The hook at the core of Never Let Go is a strong one, as either direction the plot chooses results in horror. Because we know that we’re watching a movie, it is entirely plausible that the evil is real and is endlessly tormenting this poor family, forcing them to live desperate, harsh lives. Simultaneously, the film doesn’t exactly hide its parent-centric themes and larger metaphor, and there are plenty of details planted that suggest June may be wholly out of her mind (Alexandre Aja and Elliot Greenberg do a smart job presenting alternative perspectives on certain events that only further fuel the ambiguity.
A strong sign that you’re enjoying a thriller is when your brain repeatedly bounces back and forth between anticipated conclusions, as it means you’re locked into the characters and stakes. That’s the experience Never Let Go presents.
Halle Berry delivers a shocking performance that gets seriously scary.
The film’s intimate story leans heavily on its performers, and it’s a case where it is very helpful to have an Academy Award-winning star playing one of the leads. Halle Berry delivers what is a truly ego-less performance, as June is not a caring mother of the heartwarming variety. Her version of caring is based in ensuring the survival of her boys, and that takes some harsh forms. Her intensity and the measures she is willing to take can be accepted when balanced against the evil she says is waiting in the woods to take her children, but fractures in the veracity of her claims provides a very different kind of light, and it makes Berry one of the substantial sources of scary in the horror film.
The other side of the equation is Sam and Nolan – the obvious challenge being the placement of the majority of the movie’s dramatic weight on two young actors. Percy Daggs IV and Anthony B. Jenkins are up for the task, respectively representing the central conflict of Never Let Go. Nolan has an unflinching faith in his mother and the power of the house to ward off the evil, but Sam begins to wonder if she is either lying or unwell, and the start of that doubt is ultimately toxic for the family’s established way of life. In addition to their emotional individual performances in some extreme cinematic circumstances, Daggs and Jenkins also have a great chemistry that sells them as conflicted siblings.
One particular sequence in Never Let Go will long remain in the minds of audiences.
Never Let Go is big on psychological terror, but fans have come to expect visceral terror from Alexandre Aja, and they won’t be left disappointed – the film starting with a shot of a corpse rotting in the wild. Without saying too much (I promise), the evil takes on many freaky forms in the movie, and there is some excellent creature design as special effects and makeup teams blend human and snake qualities to scary effect.
That being said, there is a scene so upsetting in Never Let Go that audiences should really start emotionally girding themselves now. I won’t say any more than that, as the sequence in discussion is going to land best if you don’t know too much going in, but it’s as throttling as anything I’ve seen on the big screen this year, and you’ll need some time to recover from the atmosphere it creates (and those of you who are familiar with Aja’s filmography will be extra rewarded by the terror instilled, understanding that he is not a director prone to pulling punches and not knowing how far he might take things).
Spooky Season 2024 is already pretty crowded with new horror titles, with Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and James Watkins’ Speak No Evil now in theaters, and Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance sharing an opening weekend with Never Let Go, but this is one worth seeking out before all of its secrets are carelessly shared. It’s another post-2020 win for original horror and disturbing enough to hang around in your mind for a nice long while.
