Never Let Go (2024) Movie Review

Coming off her Academy Award-winning performance for “Monster’s Ball”—making her the first woman of color to win the Oscar for leading actress—Halle Berry’s career seemed poised for a meteoric rise to go alongside her franchise work in films like “X-Men,” opening the floodgates for Hollywood film opportunities for Black women. This makes the subsequent decade-and-a-half of Berry’s career all the more disheartening, as studios were more than willing to pigeonhole the star into a series of forgettable-to-disastrous projects rather than herald her rise as a harbinger of much-needed change in the industry.

In recent years, Berry’s career has, tragically, never entirely escaped the studio dumping-ground stench of projects like “The Call” or “New Year’s Eve,” even with the occasional “John Wick” film to remind us that she can still kick ass and dominate the screen. “Never Let Go,” a genre piece from the mind behind “Piranha 3D” and “Crawl,” probably isn’t going to be the vehicle to snap Berry’s career back on the more serious track it undoubtedly deserves. Still, at least director Alexandre Aja understands the value of his star’s more unhinged capabilities when placed in the right setting.

A simmering, forest-bound apocalyptic thriller about the responsibilities of motherhood akin to “Bird Box,” “Never Let Go” finds Berry as the protective mother of two young boys (Percy Daggs IV and Anthony B. Jenkins) living out in a desolate house in the middle of the woods. (Given the decently committed Southern accents and dense, misty overgrowth, we can surmise their story is probably set somewhere around Louisiana.) Nolan and Sammul have always lived alone with their mother, growing up under the assumption that the world has gone to hell (very nearly literally), with a lurking evil ready to turn any remaining people into fork-tongued, zombified flesh monsters.

Never Let Go (2024) Movie — A still from “Never Let Go” (2024)

The only safe haven from this parasitic evil is their house, blessed to withstand the evil that lies beyond and, by extension, the ropes the family has tied to the foundation of the building. As Berry’s mother character states, these ropes are their lifeline, and letting go even for a second as they set out to forage for food could mean certain death if the evil manages to touch them. They must, therefore, hold on tight and—say it with me, kids!—never let go.

After our first encounter with this mysterious evil, “Never Let Go” makes it clear that the mother is the only one in the family who actually sees these physical manifestations of the deadly force. This places her as a crucial protective figure for the clan, but right away, it also instills a sense of looming skepticism regarding the validity of this threat to begin with. This is the only reality Nolan and Sammul have ever known, so is it real or the manifestation of their mother’s paranoid delusions?

This is a question “Never Let Go,” and its screenwriters Kevin Coughlin and Ryan Grassby begin by asking somewhat implicitly. However, as the film progresses, this potential misplacement of fear comes to the forefront. As the evil can’t touch the family so long as they remain tied to their ropes (how convenient…), its horror manifests in more subtly sinister ways. For example, it mainly messes with their concentration as they go about hunting for whatever scraps of food they can find in the wild. As hunger closes in and options become scarce, it’s only natural for skepticism to take hold, if only in the hopes that something more sustainable may be out there.

It’s here that Aja makes the most of the paranoia seeping through his subjects. The hazy woodland and unsettling sound design—from the creaking of a wooden rocking chair to the crunch of cooked bark offered as a last-ditch meal—envelop the film. Coupled with the ominous score from Rob (…that’s it, just “Rob”), “Never Let Go” maintains a solid atmosphere of tension in the paranoia that begins to consume the children, perhaps an inherited trait from a mistrustful matriarch.

This bubbling atmosphere of anxiety culminates in a somewhat surprising development one hour into the film, which commendably shifts the dynamic between the children for the remainder of the film. When it comes time to double down on the effects of this development, though, Alexandre Aja and his screenwriters remain too tepid to come down on a firm side, more content to let their wishy-washy plotting disguise itself as purposeful ambiguity.

Whether one side or the other would make for a better decision (for the record, there is a better choice), “Never Let Go” is unable to commit regardless, leaving the tension to deflate under the exhaustion of its leap-frogging positions. At a certain point, the time comes for these characters to decide whether it’s time to go against the oft-repeated mantra of their film’s title; just as well, Aja and his team would have done better to let one of their competing realities go and hold onto the other just a little bit tighter.