Los Angeles, CA – Alexandre Aja, the French director known for trashy B-movie pulp like Crawl and Piranha 3D, tries his hand at a family-in-peril horror with Never Let Go. The film, starring Halle Berry, is a Southern Gothic chamber piece set in an isolated woodlands house where a protective mother lives with her two sons, Samuel and Nolan. To protect against an omnipresent evil that only she can see, they must remain tethered to the house with ropes. While Berry stokes the ambiguity, the film ultimately stalls, running out of juice despite a few bracing jump scares.
The setup is laborious: Momma (Berry) and her preteen twin sons live in isolation, and whenever they step outside, they must remain tied to the house. The evil, which has poisoned humanity, can take many forms—from a snake to zombified humans who want to destroy the love inside the boys. Momma’s furious threats and purification rituals hint at her potential for Piper Laurie-style craziness, but she stops short. A harsh winter forces the family to eat sautéed tree bark, and hunger drives a wedge between the brothers when Nolan begins to doubt his mother’s warnings.
The friction between the two young actors, Anthony B. Jenkins and Percy Daggs IV, is well-played, and the makeup team does excellent work hollowing out their faces as malnutrition takes its toll. However, the movie gets monotonous with its “Is Momma crazy or speaking the truth?” dilemma. A startling development over halfway through ups the stakes, but by then, the film has become an inevitable countdown.
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Aja amps up the closing stretch with fiery action, demonic visitations, and body horror, but it’s dull and silly. On a craft level, the film is polished, with atmospheric cinematography and a robustly eerie score. Berry, also a producer, gives it her all, blurring the lines between fiercely protective and paranoid. But all her conviction can’t breathe substance into a story that’s more complicated than complex.
