4,212 / 5,580 (25%)
Halle Berry versus trauma and the trees.
Never Let Go follows a single mother known only as Momma (Halle Berry), and her two sons Samuel (Anthony B. Jenkins) and Nolan (Percy Daggs IV). Momma has moved her children into a family house deep in the remote woods. She believes the world has ended, humanity has died, and that it is only by having a physical connection to her family home that one can survive “the evil” only visible to herself. To find food she has rigged a rope system that allows the trio to venture into the forest protected from the evil’s grasp (the protection provided by the home seems to flow through anything attached to it, such as the ropes).
Veteran horror director Alexandre Aja (Crawl, 2019) helms this contained forested thriller with no sense of personal style. Never Let Go looks like another random M. Night Shyamalan film (or an Ishana Night Shyamalan, as her debut film, The Watchers, from earlier this year has similar attempts at creepy forest photography), and it doesn’t help that it relies on a thin metaphor and an anticipated “twist.” The film fails its characters by robbing them of seminal moments and playing everything off hastily and without note. Key turns are shot unremarkably and the story casually passes them by, communicating nothing to its audience, other than that maybe Aja just wants Never Let Go to be over.
We see Momma and the brothers struggle to find resources within the limits of their ropes. Desperation strikes, and we watch Momma prepare the family’s boiled tree bark dinners. All the while, we are clued in on some of Momma’s visions of the evil that appears to her as the decaying dead bodies of her family. Berry is capable as Momma, playing her with an even level of survival instincts and lunacy, though the script gives Berry nowhere to go with her character. Like the gray, dark lighting, the muddy green forest, and the muted clothes, the writing moves only in one direction with no room for nuance.
Never Let Go is an exercise in stating the obvious. The supernatural horror film lacks creativity and has far less will to live than its characters. The one bright spot is the performance of Percy Daggs IV. He pops off the screen as the unbelieving Nolan and gives this film what little life and purpose it has.
