On October 10, cinemas began showing a thriller/horror movie with elements of a post-apocalyptic survival film «Never Let Go» starring Halle Berry. The film was directed by the famous French horror maker Alexandre Aja, so the audience could expect a high-quality representative of the creepy genre. In the review below, we’ll tell you whether «Never Let Go» can be considered as such.
Pluses:
attempts to intrigue the viewer; good acting (Halle Berry is still great); a few scary moments;
Minuses:
the movie turns out to be banally boring; attempts to create a fog are unsuccessful; the ending is frankly disappointing;
«Never Let Go»
Genre thriller, horror
Director Alexander Aja
Starring Halle Berry, Percy Daggs IV, Anthony B. Jenkins, Christine Park, Stephanie Lavin, Matt Anderson, Mila Morgan
Premiere movie theaters
Year of issue 2024
Website IMDb, official website
In a dark, dark forest, in a dark, dark cabin… Okay, let’s not go with these primitive children’s horror stories. June, a single mother, is raising her two young sons, Nolan and Samuel, in an old cabin in the middle of a gloomy forest. Well, she literally keeps them tethered. The point is that you can only go outside when you are tied to the house with a rope. If you do not, a scary thing will jump out from around the corner, and there will be no more exciting squirrel hunting or fun dancing to an old record.
By the way, only June herself can see this mysterious and terrifying «something». In her words, the whole world has perished because it has been engulfed by a ruthless evil, and only ropes will save it from death. But besides the fact that the bony woman with the braid is still threatening the strange, reclusive family, at least from starvation, one of the two brothers begins to doubt — what if the long-suffering mother has simply lost her mind?
Looking at the brief description of the story, it becomes obvious that this is clearly a Shyamalan-type material.
A mysterious, mystical threat to the characters in a gloomy setting in absolute isolation from the outside world — yes. The ambiguity of what is shown is true and what is a figment of a sick imagination is welcome. Hints of allegory and a signature unexpected ending that can shock (or can it?) — take it and sign for it. It’s like «The Village» met «Knock at the Cabin», in which the main characters also became hostages of circumstances in a forest cabin.
And this is not to mention that Shyamalan himself produced his daughter Ishana’s recent mystery horror «The Watchers», who tried to do it like her dad, but something went wrong. «Never Let Go» also has a lot in common with this representative of the «Predatory Forest» genre, and that’s not a compliment.
The trouble is that Alexandre Aja is not Shyamalan even in his worst form, and Shyamalan’s has been going on, with some reservations, for about 20 years. But the point is not to compare their talents, but to say that the Frenchman is better at material of a slightly different kind. The plots are not about mythological mysterious evil, when there is not always an understanding of what exactly is meant, but rather about a real, physical threat in the flesh. In Aja’s Hollywood debut, a remake of The Hills Have Eyes «The Hills Have Eyes» Wes Craven, it was killer mutants. In the semi-tongue-in-cheek «Piranha» — a deadly prehistoric fish, and in the then fashionable 3D. In «Crawl» with the belligerent Kaya Scodelario — hungry alligators.
In other words, Aja — is not so much about the fog and gradual build-up of the atmosphere as it is about bloody dynamics and severed (or gnawed off, depending on how the cards fall) limbs. But playing with the viewer’s expectations, particularly in the climax, is something the Frenchman also practices from time to time — think of «Haute tension», «Mirrors», or «Oxygen».
In «Never Let Go», the director has to move away from his usual bloodsucking drive and literally turn on Shyamalan, which turned out to be a bad idea.
It would be nice to penetrate the main intrigue — what is the truth — whether we have a real mortal threat here, or whether Halle Berry’s character is just a crazy aunt who tortures and starves her children. But this will not work because whatever the answer is, it is a priori incapable of surprising and satisfying, given the secondary nature of the idea as such.
Just as it is unlikely that anyone will want to seriously analyze the potential allegory of this plot. Perhaps it’s about the hyper-protection of a crazy mom. Maybe it’s about the merits of French cuisine (eating dandelions is included). Or maybe, what never happens, a diligent adaptation of the line «I’ll tie your body to the ropes» from the song «Ropes» by the pop band NikitA. I remembered this.
Halle Berry reads a symbolic fairy tale about Hansel and Gretel to children who are about to eat tree bark chips (but natural!). And on the eve of the premiere in the American box office confesses, that the creators have ready-made stories for sequels and a prequel, and if «Never Let Go» is successful, it could become a franchise. Something tells me that «Never Let Go» will not have a franchise.
The filmmakers of this depressing and gray movie try to intrigue the viewer, but they don’t succeed, and the answers they give are not really impressive. At certain moments, they try to scare us, but somehow it’s too lazy, as if for show. They offer us to feel for the unfortunate characters, but the only one who is really scary here is their dog. Watching this movie is like chewing on perfectly fried pieces of bark – it’s chewy, but it’s completely inedible.
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