Never Let Go Review – A Grim Walk Through Familiar Woods

Never Let Go is a well-made but ultimately frustrating horror experience. Halle Berry acquits herself well in a haunting environment. If you’re mostly interested in watching her carry the film on her back, you’ll get what you paid for here. However, the rest of the project relies on dodgy jump scares, blunt theming, and half-hearted ambiguity. I’m struggling to determine an ideal audience for the project. It actually may be perfect for those who are still new to horror cinema.

Alexandre Aja’s director credit was the first thing that drew me to Never Let Go. His filmography is full of titles that glimpse greatness only to wind up with questionable results. I think his best project might be Crawl, a killer alligator movie that lets him flex his talent for self-aware chaos. He recently created Oxygen, a claustrophobic science-fiction thriller that went pretty well. Aja’s latest aims a little higher than Crawl or Oxygen, but his participation is a mixed bag.

Learning the Rules

Never Let Go follows Halle Berry as Joan, a desperate mother managing her kids’ survival efforts. Her twin sons, relative newcomers Percy Daggs IV and Anthony B. Jenkins, follow a set of Draconian rules. Their house, Joan explains, is the last bastion of safety in a world under an evil curse. Its ancient wood can keep them safe, but they must always stay connected to the foundation by a system of ropes. If they ever “let go,” they risk death at the hands of an ever-encroaching evil. Only Joan can see the evil, which takes many human forms to trick its victims. Joan provides for her sons, but a brutal winter is gradually pushing them toward starvation. The harsh conditions prompt the boys to reconsider their view of Joan’s rules, creating new knots in the metaphorical rope that binds them.

Without wishing to spoil anything, there’s an obvious question at the heart of Never Let Go. Only Joan can see the evil, forcing her sons to rely on her perspective. Elder twin Sam is cautious enough to trust his mother implicitly, but young Nolan develops doubts. We, the audience, must wonder whether there is any evil at all. Joan would have you and her kids believe that the entire world outside of their home forest is fallen. The evil claimed every man, woman, and child beyond that length of rope. She tells stories of the old world, condemning its sinful ways and suggesting that it deserved to die. Halle Berry nails this performance, running through every extreme emotion throughout her appearance. This ambiguous premise is one of the movie’s big problems. You’ll probably develop an answer to the central question far before Alexandre Aja wants you to.

The Banality of Evil

A good portion of Never Let Go follows Joan, Sam, and Nolan trying to survive the conditions of their lifestyle. Aja reunites with cinematographer Maxime Alexandre to turn the Vancouver wilderness into a haunting wasteland. Though teeming with life, the film’s forest feels somehow empty. Sam and Nolan consistently struggle to navigate the trees, mainly because being tied to a house is a massive inconvenience while hunting and foraging. I kept wanting the flora and fauna to be a bigger part of the film’s tapestry. It has a couple of moments to shine, but these natural elements are set dressing. Fallen trees provide darkness for unseen threats. Frogs and insects mingle with the film’s soundtrack. At one point, we see a massive snake mingling with the foliage. Chris Nash’s In a Violent Nature turned its slasher villain into part of its ecosystem. Never Let Go never manages the same.

It seems like we’re all past complaining about jump scares. They’re a tool to be used well or poorly, like any other. One of the problems with those sudden thrills is that they’re cheap. It’s too easy to leave an audience in silence before playing a loud sound to startle a crowd. They don’t feel earned, especially as more and more viewers grow savvy enough to see them coming. Never Let Go has more than its fair share of jump scares. They aren’t its only move, but they are surprisingly prominent. A couple stands out as particularly cheap and lazy examples, reminiscent of the awful Aja-produced found footage movie The Pyramid. My problem with them here is that they don’t gel with the haunting atmosphere or deadly serious themes. Never Let Go is less a horror movie and more an extremely depressing survival film that occasionally screams at you.

Learning to Let Go

Ultimately, Never Let Go is an enjoyable horror movie with a few key flaws. The atmosphere and the acting will carry you through it. The soundtrack by frequent collaborator Robin “Rob” Coudert also deserves some attention. If you’ve seen fewer horror movies than most, you may have your mind blown by some of its thematic qualities. Almost anyone can enjoy the material, but it will likely feel a bit familiar to some. It aims a bit too high, but the fundamental elements of filmmaking behind its questionable conclusions feel solid. It seems fitting for a movie about people tied to a house’s substructure to have a good foundation.

Never Let Go isn’t going to set the world on fire, but it doesn’t have to. If you’re looking for a serviceable horror movie, you could do a lot worse than this. It won’t be especially fun, but that appears to be intentional. I just wish that this story about so many things found something a bit more compelling to say about its heavy themes.