Never Let Go, the latest film from horror director Alexandre Aja, is a tense thriller centered on the bond between a mother protecting her two sons from an evil force that’s taken over the world. Set amongst the backdrop of a desolate and isolating woodland, the ‘evil’ which torments them in the woodland can only bring harm if they are untethered from the ropes attached to the safety of the family house.
The ropes represent the bond of the family, as they must cling together and never let go or let in to the evil that surrounds them. The film does very well keeping the audience on their toes, unsure as to what’s real and imaginary, deep within the unsettling labyrinthian woodland. It brings you into the confusion facing the family as they fight for survival. For fans of a jump scare, this film is for you. The score was brooding and the sound design was cleverly utilized, maximizing the sense of vulnerability and isolation deep in the forest.
There are a few plot holes and key elements left unexplored, but it’s an enjoyable film tackling a deeper message of mental health within the family. But there’s a lot to be interpreted and some purposely unanswered questions, forcing you to decide for yourself.
CREDIT: REUBEN HUNT
SYNOPSIS
Academy Award® winner Halle Berry (Monster’s Ball, Actress in a Leading Role, 2001) stars in NEVER LET GO, the newest film from visionary horror director Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes, Crawl) and the producers of “Stranger Things.” Berry plays June, known simply as Momma to her fraternal twin sons, Samuel (Anthony B. Jenkins) and Nolan (Percy Daggs IV). After an entity she calls “The Evil” took over the world, Momma has kept her family safe for the past ten years by confining them to the cabin where she herself grew up.
They forage and hunt in the surrounding woods, making sure to “never let go” of the ropes tied to the foundation of their increasingly dilapidated home, which they believe is the only place in the world safe from “The Evil.” But as food runs low, the boys began to wonder whether “The Evil” is even real — or if Momma’s just really, really sick. With the ties that bind them severed, a terrifying fight for survival ensues.
Lionsgate presents, in association with Media Capital Technologies, a 21 Laps / HalleHolly production. Produced by Shawn Levy, Dan Cohen, Dan Levine, and Alexandre Aja. Executive produced by Halle Berry, Holly Jeter, Daniel Clarke, Emily Morris, Christopher Woodrow, Connor DiGregorio. Screenplay by KC Coughlin & Ryan Grassby. Directed by Alexandre Aja.
MOMMA AND THE BOYS: CASTING THE LEADS
“When I read the script the first time,” Aja says, “one thing that [was] very obvious… is that the movie’s really about these three characters. It’s about [Momma], and it’s about the two boys.” Indeed, the interactions among these three takes up the majority of the story’s runtime — and with a central character as complex as Momma, Aja knew that he would need “someone who can be… the protection and at the same time maybe the danger for these boys.”
When asked what made her think so immediately of Berry after encountering the script, Jeter answers: “I really had wanted her to play a multi-dimensional character who was… deeply, deeply troubled and conflicted, but had a great capacity for love… [someone] both desperate and afraid, and yet strong and brave, [who’s] questioning within herself if she’s making the right choices, if she’s repeating the sins of her parents.”
“I remember the first conversation [Berry and I] had,” Aja recounts. “It was really about making something that was not just another scary movie.” In Aja’s theory of horror, “the ball of fire falling from the sky — that’s not what’s scary. What’s scary is if you believe the person that’s running away from that ball of fire.” The character of Momma provides a rich canvas on which to explore these ideas.
“Momma is very complicated,” Berry says. “She’s tortured, you know? I think she herself wonders if this evil that’s surrounding her is real… and I think she questions throughout the entire movie, is she doing the right thing? Fundamentally I think she feels like she is, but that’s the big question for me.” Producer Shawn Levy says, “the aspects of brotherhood, of nature vs nurture, objective truth – these were all amplified by the supernatural horror at play.
We really love that at the centre of everything is a mother who will do anything to keep her children safe and twin brothers who are all each other have ever had.” When we first meet Momma, she’s been living alone with her sons for over ten years. The world, she tells them, has been overcome by a nebulous force she calls “The Evil,” which has touched and infected everyone.
Their cabin — which she tells them is an a “blessed home of ancient wood,” a refrain she and the boys repeat every night as a prayer — is the last refuge in the world against The Evil, but even so, they have to keep watch and make sure that it doesn’t get in, corrupt them, and turn them against one another.
THE WORLD BEFORE: PREPARING FOR THE ROLES
Part of what makes these family dynamics so interesting is that what we learn about Momma makes us believe that it’s actually her and Nolan who are “very, very similar,” as Aja says. “Because when she was a kid she ran away from that house… she grew up with a very religious, violent, zealot kind of family that believed that evil was in the world.” Now it’s Nolan who can’t believe that — just as Momma herself once believed — “life in the middle of nowhere is better than life in the outside world,” Aja explains.
Momma’s backstory is only referenced fleetingly — though, in one case, quite memorably in a scene where The Evil, taking the form of Poppa (William Catlett), walks around the house and asks to see his children. From this apparition we learn Momma’s real name (June) as well as get a glimpse into the person she was before The Evil forced her to go into hiding at her parents’ cabin. There’s other scattered details — such as her back tattoo of a snake (itself a recurring motif throughout the film as a symbol of the “shapeshifting evil forces,” in Aja’s words, “found in [the Judeo-Christian religion] and in other lore and mythology”), as well as the instant camera that she brings out in order to show Nolan and Samuel glimpses of her past life.
Never Let Go is out in cinemas from the 27th September, so get your tickets now!
