Never Let Go movie review: Where fear goes astray

Never Let Go movie review

Film: Never Let Go
Cast: Halle Berry, Anthony B. Jenkins, William Catlett, Percy Daggs IV, Matthew Kevin Anderson, Christin Park, Stephanie Lavigne, Cadence Compton
Director: Alexandre Aja
Rating: 2/5
Runtime: 101 min

Alexandre Aja's Horror Fairy Tale is flaky and unprepossessing. The real horror here is the over-stimulated imagination of the principal characters - a mother and her two pre-teen non-identical twin sons Samuel (Anthony B. Jenkins) and Nolan (Percy Daggs IV) living in a desolate woodlands home in the midst of a rundown forest.

Some kind of omnipresent evil has taken over the world beyond the stairs leading up to their home. The mother also called Momma (Halle Berry), reminds her sons of the need to stay together and connected to the rope tied to the basement window of the house. Apparently, that is the only thing that protects them from the malevolent spirits waiting to get them. Aja throws in a few disjointed hallucinatory images and a couple of utterly laughable jump scares in his effort to make this horror worthy. Snakes, zombified humans, demons fly upwind as Momma's mind begins to unravel.

The French director aims for a more serious, dark, psychologically entrenched horror thriller narrative where the mother and sons are desperately struggling to survive on the meagre pickings of a forest that lacks wild life and other food sources. They have a green house but no vegetables are grown there. It looks pretty derelict. The storage jars in the kitchen are running on empty. They are supposedly starving for want of food and the only time they step out is to forage for frogs, tree barks, rabbits, squirrels, snails, worms, crows etc. Hunger and desperation have taken a heavy toll on Momma's mind. They are made to chant a rhyming incantation before venturing out and another for once they're back inside, with their hands touching the sacred wood. Disobeying Momma's instructions may have disastrous consequences. She either shuts them up in the cellar or holds a knife over their heads forcing them to chant the rhyme. The convoluted lore feels like it came out of left field, Doesn't make sense or provide any sense of well-being to the characters. The narrative doesn't play out in coherent fashion. Apparently the pet dog is unaffected by evil and has the freedom to roam the forest at will. He even looks well fed and hardy.

When Momma decides that it was time to kill the pet dog for food, Nolan decides to rebel. That unexpected behavior leads to nihilistic consequences. The leanly plotted screenplay makes heavy weather of trivial incidents and even sets up the killing of an innocent hiker, in an effort to expand the blood and gore. But to no avail. The stress on the oft-repeated litany and repetitive calls for ‘Never letting go' becomes irritating after a point. Aja's exploration of bleak circumstances and ungainly attempt to tap into shared universal fears doesn't have much teeth. The audience never really gets into the fear psychosis affecting the mother and as a result doesn't feel connected enough to root for the trio's survival.

Aja's longtime cinematographer Maxime Alexandre provides for brooding character definition and cinematography. The forest looks dense and heavily eerie. The eerie score by French indie pop artist Robin Coudert, aids the discomfort. Production designer Jeremy Stanbridge makes the house look threatening. The narrative is on slow-boil, the camerawork is beguiling enough but the lack of witchy intensity and dread coupled with a script that hides much more than it reveals, hampers the experience. There's no claustrophobic unease or psychological torment to experience here. Aja's efforts don't really come good.