Never Let Go
Over the years, Alexandre Aja’s reputation has transformed since his 2004 cult film High Tension , as many fans of the genre have come to acknowledge his impressive execution of set pieces and tight spaces If you dislike ‘Crawl’, I really don’t know what to say. He makes a return this week, however, with another single setting piece that he seemingly loves, though this one is told differently More like how Michael Mann produces Fugitive movies, the focus is on how far the mother goes to protect her children, or at least that’s what it seems to be about. Aja’s direction is as strong as ever, however, and he has a strong technical team around him to balance what and that’s probably that is the weakest aspect of the film this time. Just when you are wrapping your arms around what Never Let Go is facilely depicting or thematically alludes to, it will slip out of your grasp. A quilt of mental disease, PTSD, over mothering, the presence of evil and finally what seems to be COVID analogies, Aja never let’s go fail on the account of its ideas from within. It offers too little of worth to grasp.
“Never Let Go” takes place almost the whole time in an isolated house which is occupied by three people in all: an unnamed woman who is their mother (Halle Berry), and her two kids, Nolan (Percy Daggs IV) and Samuel (Anthony B. Jenkins). There are several nuances which make the first act of ‘Never Let Go’ feel like a variant of ‘A Quiet Place’ where a family is trying to resist the forces of evil assailing their place of refuge. One rule, for example, is that when out hunting for food or simply when out in the nature, they are not allowed to stray away from the rope connected to their cabin. The mother warns the boys of some evil that will come upon them if they sever the rope, hinting at the rope as a metaphor for masks vaccines for a family in a lockdown clearly up to you how you interpret this in the context of lockdowns. Yet, there is an evil, seen only by her: her mother, the abuser, the awful husband, these people are the ghosts that haunt her. If she finds the opportunity, the ‘Evil’ will dominate her or the boys, locking the three in a dump house with empty stock.
There’s good reason why it only dawns on Nolan as possibly unreal, and we know it’s makeup effects which create the terrifying creations which only mom apparantly sees kudos to the makeup team. And surprisingly, we do as well, at the height of the film. What if mother is only seeing visions as an effect of all the trauma she has experienced? Is that just another exposition of horror concerning mental illness? If so, it isn’t uncommon for the brothers to separate in such circumstances as they are spiral in their starvation even deeper down. Nolan begins to question, while mother’s side Samuel is unshaken. It resolves toward confrontation regarding what is really there in the woods, and bordering the question, what is more frightening for the brothers what’s there in the woods, or their mother.
“Never Let Go” is a short film with many ideas, but a number of them never had a chance to be pursued. Berry at the film premiere said that she wanted it to be a movie people talk about long after they’ve seen it. But that really is an error because stressing too much on themes present in this particular movie is baffling.
The missed chance is the great loss the chance to explore the most promising thread of KC Coughlin & Ryan Grassby’s script the idea that mom lost her mind many years ago. One note, Berry fails to do enough with it, overly emphasizing the motherly defense business, while there is a version of this film where her character can be terrifying. She claims that many years ago, long before all these events, she was possessed by a dark force, and this world has already changed but we have as much reason to believe this as the boys. This character should embody discomfort and possible insanity with each bone and every line, but there is only so much range Ms. Berry possesses for such a multi layered role.
It’s up to Aja’s direction and the sense he has in hiring people to pull it off that saves all the best parts of “Never Let Go”. He finds a good use of background action, almost always showing us something onscreen that a character will notice from the corner of their eye, like a menace lurking in the shadows outdoors or via a window. His developed visual language along with cinematographer Maxime Alexandre on shared works like “Crawl” or “Oxygen” works to their advantage over here as well. It is a striking film visually with quite a good tone owing to the effective score from Robin Coudert.
While these elements certainly bear mention, they cannot raise how low this movie has so many of its marks. Or, I should say, so many marks. As for Aja’s better movies, they are the sorts that build up momentum, and point us in one direction, to eventually travel down an ever increasing speed track. This one never attains that pace or rhythm, which wastes some of its finest ideas due to excessive repetition of mundane ones. Aja will be back and probably in a much better way with the under production “Crawl 2”. By that time, we will all have already forgotten about this one.
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