Never Let Go (now on Starz) is a high-concept horror-thriller starring Halle Berry as a possibly cursed, possibly mentally ill woman who believes an entity known as The Evil lurks in the forest outside her home, and the only way to safely venture out of the house is to remain attached to it via a very long rope. That’s quite the metaphor for any number of things, including potentially watching the movie itself, which had me feeling like I was at the end of MY rope. This is a classic do-not-look-the-concept-directly-in-the-eye/do-not-taunt-happy-fun-concept type of plot, but director Alexandre Aja – who steered his career out of the junk-horror junkyard with his last two tightly wound films, Crawl and Oxygen – might give this one enough suspense and scares to make us overlook its overcooked allegories and clumsy-complicated premise.
The Gist: First rule of overly folksy child-narrated voiceovers: Don’t. Just don’t. But somebody has to explain the premise around here. I previously revealed how Momma (Berry) believes her reality works, but you’ll need more detail than that, so one of her twin, 10-year-old-ish sons dishes with a droppin’-Gs slightly Appalachian accent that once The Evil touches you, you’re done for. Also, that the rest of the world beyond the reach of her rope is kaputskies. Dead. A post-apocalyptic zombie wasteland, as the people in the forest, who are The Evil, lumber around pale and hissing, with forked tongues and black sludge running down their chins. Momma an’ her two boys, Nolan (Percy Daggs IV) and Samuel (Anthony B. Jenkins), gotta forage for food and wood from the surroundings, and they’re protected from The Evil as long as they’re attached to the magic wood in the magic house with magic ropes. They have a pet dog, who’s fine without a rope; sometimes he snatches a rabbit for dinner. It seems The Evil is only interested in humans, who are as easily corruptible as ever.
We watch as they go through a ritual of incantations – or poetry, if you’re feeling charitable – and knottings of the rope. They say one thing in unison before venturing into the woods: . Momma wields a crossbow and the boys have machetes (to chop stumps that yield delicious grubs) and slingshots (to bean squirrels). Samuel finds a little frog and snatches it, examines it, and pops it in his mouth and crunches it down. Protein! Nolan contemplates untethering himself just for a moment to grab an egg just out of reach, but Samuel stops him – it could be a trick, he says. There’s an incident: Nolan and Samuel argue and Nolan steps on Samuels rope which comes undone and Samuel falls and twists his ankle and Momma comes running and quickly wraps them all in her rope as a zombie in the form of her own mother tries to GET ’EM. When they get home, the boys have to prove they’re not possessed by touching the magic carving in the floor and reciting the magic poem as Momma threatens them with a knife. And this is when one wonders if the zombies are shambling metaphors for Child Protective Services.
A rift forms between the boys when Nolan starts wondering out loud why Momma can see the zombies but they can’t. Curious! Samuel isn’t so skeptical: “Why you asking all these questions?” he shoots at Nolan, and I have an answer – it’s because Nolan is the analogue for the audience. If The Evil got them, Nolan wonders, “do you think she woulda killed us like she killed Papa? Like she killed Grandma and Grandpa?” I think I speak for us all when I say YIKES. Is Momma dragging her children into her homicidal delusions? They maintain their loyalty to Momma through a hard, hard winter. All their provisions are gone, and their roped foraging only yields tree bark to eat. At this point, when we’re pondering whether the boys will defy their mother and risk encountering The Evil so they don’t starve. We also learn that Nolan sleepwalks, which means he might wander into the woods without realizing it. And Momma digs out the old Polaroid camera, and explains to the boys how it works. If you don’t recognize these two things as good ol’ fashioned plot devices that’ll come in handy when the movie needs to explain itself, well, I hope you enjoyed your first movie ever.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Never Let Go has the isolated-family/high-concept setup of A Quiet Place, mixed with the when’s-the-other-shoe-gonna-drop plot of a clunky Shyamalan thriller like The Village. And as far as monster-metaphors for mental illness go, Control Freak is far sturdier and more compelling.
Contrived political partisanship – one believes, one doesn’t, and there’s no moderate politician to stand haplessly between them
Performance Worth Watching: Among the teensy cast, Daggs IV boasts the most natural screen presence despite being stuck in so many story contrivances.
Memorable Dialogue: The boys bicker over fried tree bark for dinner:
Nolan: It’s better with sap.
Samuel: Yeah. That’ll make it taste LESS like a tree.
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: Never Let Go takes itself so seriously that we just can’t take it seriously. I mean, the concept is on par with hiding under the covers so the monster in the closet can’t get ya. Berry flirts with campy po-facedness – inadvertently? Who can tell? – as zombies side-eye Momma and her rope, and as she delivers grim-as-a-mortuary campfire-story warnings about not venturing into the dark woods over platefuls of bugs and misery for dinner every night. The dialogue doesn’t reach Shyamalan-level awkwardness, but it’s close, as if screenwriters KC Coughlin and Ryan Grassby are trying so hard to craft a Grimmlike parable, they end up leaving the caterpillar pie in the oven so long, it bursts into flame.
Ideas do exist in this jumble of allegory and metaphor – various and sundry ruminations on parenting, mental illness, isolation, survivalism and good vs. evil, which exist blandly within an is-it-real-or-just-a-manifestation-of-an-insane-mind a/v narrative that feels like it might pull a rug or two out from under us, while plot revelations and resolutions are predictable or shrugworthy. Weirdly, the setting, a basic-ass forest, is unconvincing, as Aja shoots nature with a digital sheen that sometimes makes it look like greenscreens on a backlot. The creature design is the only component that rises above mediocrity, and one would think Aja, more than two decades into his career, should be past only-a-dream jump scares by now. I was by turns bored and unconvinced. Yawn, I say. Yawn.
Our Call: Contrary to popular assertions, it’s perfectly fine to let go! Or not to grab on in the first place! SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
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