NEVER LET GO (2024)

Studio:   Lionsgate
Director: Alexandre Aja
Writer:   KC Coughlin, Ryan Grassby
Producer: Shawn Levy, Dan Cohen, Dan Levine, Alexandre Aja
Stars:    Halle Berry, Percy Daggs IV, Anthony B. Jenkins, Will Catlett

Review Score:

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Summary:

Forced to live in isolation, two brothers grow to question their survivalist mother's claim that they can never leave their home due to an unknown evil that corrupted the rest of the world.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Single mother Joan, a survivalist, raises her two sons Samuel and Nolan in isolation in a remote woodland cabin. Joan insistently teaches the boys to believe an evil presence only she can see destroyed the rest of the world, and it will use manipulative tactics like taking the shapes of other people to corrupt their family and turn them against each other. This belief began with Joan's deceased mother, whose husband built their home with blessed wood to keep their family safe. Grandpa also attached ropes to the foundation so they could venture into the surrounding forest for food and return safely to the cabin while being protected from the evil, which supposedly can only touch them when they are outside the house.

I - THE ROPE IS YOUR LIFELINE

With their ropes attached, Joan, Samuel, and Nolan separately search the woods to forage for edible insects and animals. Samuel stops Nolan, who has begun to question his mother's claims, from untying his tether to reach a bird egg. Thinking he heard his brother say "She loves me more" in reference to their mother, Nolan angrily steps on Samuel's rope, causing him to fall and injure his ankle. Joan rushes to rescue both boys as she's taunted by a vision of her mother as a ghoul.

When they return to their home, Joan disciplines her sons by forcing them to recite a mantra while touching supposedly sacred wood covering a confined crawlspace where they are regularly isolated to "clean their souls." Joan reminds Samuel and Nolan that the evil does not yet show itself to the boys, but she has seen it appear in various forms, including as a little girl who gradually starved to death, which Joan believed was a ruse to lure her outside. Joan warns that one touch without a rope is all it takes for the evil to possess them.

Later, Nolan points out to Samuel that nothing felt different when they were outside with their ropes unattached. Nolan wonders if Joan possibly killed their father. Meanwhile, Joan confronts a vision of her dead husband that taunts her about telling their sons the whole truth about their situation.

II - HOW WILL I FEED MY CHILDREN?

As supplies dwindle with winter approaching, the family is forced to eat tree bark. Joan also begins finding Nolan in strange sleepwalking trances, so she forces him to touch the floorboard wood, repeat the mantra, and stay in the crawlspace.

Nolan tells his brother they should ignore their mother and try to outrun the evil so they can venture further for food. Still trusting Joan, Samuel contends Nolan's idea is too dangerous.

Joan shows the boys a Polaroid camera. After telling them the stories behind her two keepsake photos of their father, she notes that the camera only has one shot left to take.

Warning that their bodies will soon shut down from malnutrition, Joan announces they will have to kill and eat Nolan's beloved dog Koda. Through angry tears, Nolan vehemently objects while challenging his mother that the world actually still exists, and it would be evil to eat their pet. Joan forcibly takes Koda out to the greenhouse to execute him, but she is unable to pull the trigger on her crossbow.

Thinking he can prove the evil isn't real, Nolan cuts Joan's rope, trapping her in the greenhouse. Joan pleads to be released as she reveals she blames herself for bringing the evil to their family. A haunting vision of Joan's mother then confronts her with an accusation that Joan poisoned her. Grandma also threatens to make Joan eat her baby. In distress, Joan slits her own throat and dies.

Samuel wrestles his brother away from the greenhouse door to mourn over their mother's dead body. Nolan reattaches his rope and returns to the house in saddened shock.

III - WHAT WILL BECOME OF US?

With his brother bedridden from lack of food, Nolan attaches a rope and goes to the nearest road to shout for help. When he returns home, a hiker named Cole comes by claiming he heard Nolan's screams. After Nolan explains the situation, Cole offers to give the brothers food from his backpack and take them to safety.

Samuel comes outside. Pointing the crossbow, he compels Cole to freeze. Recognizing the danger, Cole tries to leave. Nolan implores his brother to let Cole go but, believing he is the evil in disguise, Samuel shoots Cole in his back.

Nolan follows after Cole. Cole dies while calling 911 on a cellphone. Nolan collects Cole's backpack to bring back home.

Nolan gorges on Cole's small collection of canned food. Nolan offers some of the food to his brother, but Samuel refuses to eat because he believes the evil is trying to trick them.

Samuel later sneaks into the pantry to eat some of the food. He then goes through the backpack and brings a flashlight out to the porch. There, a girl claiming to be Cole's daughter approaches to ask Samuel about her missing father. Recognizing her father's flashlight, the girl runs away in apparent fright.

Samuel unties his rope to chase after the girl. In the forest, Samuel spies a snake creature climbing through the trees. The creature attacks Samuel with a snake that crawls into his throat and possesses him.

Nolan goes outside to look for his brother. Under the evil's influence, Samuel cuts Nolan's rope, forcing him to flee back to the house. Once inside, Samuel attacks Nolan and sets the cabin on fire.

Samuel watches from outside as Nolan attempts to escape the growing blaze by climbing up to the roof. On the second floor, Nolan encounters a vision of his mother beckoning to him from the flames. Meanwhile, Samuel uses the Polaroid camera to take a selfie of himself in front of the burning building.

Nolan tackles Joan into the space beneath the floorboards. Shedding her skin like a snake, the evil tears itself out of Joan's body. Nolan embraces the creature and says, "I love you, Momma," which causes the entity to disintegrate.

Medics later pull Nolan from the smoldering rubble. Aboard the rescue helicopter, Nolan sees his brother on a gurney beside him as they approach civilization, convincing him they are safe. The Polaroid photo reveals a monstrous hand on Samuel's shoulder. Samuel tells Nolan, "She loves me more."

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Review:

"Never Let Go" isn't based on a book, but it certainly seems like its structure would be better suited for the printed page. The movie's first act relies heavily on narration from a character speaking solely for the audience's benefit. This isn't automatically an issue, although a retroactive hiccup burps a bit when one realizes his voiceovers don't exist anywhere else in the movie. Still, narrators can be used to express a perspective from a particular person, offering insight into someone's thoughts that can't be conveyed through conversation or onscreen actions aside from watching them write in a journal.

Except "Never Let Go" doesn't do this. "Never Let Go" uses narration to deliver extensive exposition, which certain cinema scholars argue is a cheat at best and verboten at worst since film is a visual medium for telling a story. Because this specific setting requires detailed "rules" regarding its background, this puts the script between a rock and a hard place for getting viewers up to speed. The rock would be choosing to have actors unrealistically speak in explanatory sentences like, "Hey big sis, it's been three months since dad went to Egypt with his new wife. When do you think he'll be back from his mystery billionaire-funded expedition to that cursed tomb where those slaves died?" "Never Let Go" opts for the hard place, where the film instead says, "Eh, let's just have a disembodied voice spell out essential information."

Over opening scenes of a mother raising her two sons Samuel and Nolan in a remote woodland cabin, one of the boys tells us how the three of them came to live their lives in isolation. Once upon a time, Grandma claimed an evil presence was corrupting the world. No one believed her except Grandpa. To protect their family, he built a blessed house out of sacred wood. Knowing they'd need to forage for food in the nearby forest, he also tied ropes to the home's foundation, giving them a tether to stop the evil from touching them when they went outside.

Momma inherited the house along with the duty to keep their family away from the contagious destruction supposedly surrounding them. Momma repeatedly warns the brothers about the evil's manipulative tactics. It can take the form of anyone in its efforts to lure them away from the house and possess them, although only Momma can see the ghoulish figures it mimics.

Nolan might be the younger brother, but he's now of an age where Momma's insistence about an unseen terror grows more suspicious each day. Samuel remains steadfast in trusting Momma's strict instructions, yet Nolan wonders, what if the outside world isn't unsafe like Momma claims? What if there isn't anything special about the ropes they tie around their waists for protection? What if he challenges Momma to finally find out if the evil even exists at all?

Is Momma right about an unknown malevolence threatening them or has she needlessly sentenced her kids to solitude because her delusional mind is overcome by a paranoid fantasy? Once this plot takes shape, "Never Let Go" saddles its story with a bridle more burdensome than any minor miffs about narration. Anytime a horror movie introduces a seemingly crazy character who makes seemingly crazy claims, especially if they're either committed to an insane asylum or confronted by a disbelieving family member, that person always, always, always turns out to be telling the truth, whether it's about the existence of a ghost, a vampire, an alien, or whatever else no one but them believes. "Never Let Go" takes that trope and turns it into an entire movie where the mystery of what's really going on isn't really much of a mystery at all.

Unexpectedly, the movie overcomes this inherent flaw in its fiction by gradually trading attempts at suspense for increasingly intense interactions between the three main players. Unlike a film whose impact hinges largely on how well it hides a shocking twist, "Never Let Go" isn't designed around its reveal. It's designed around the family drama driving its themes of grief, regret, fear, and complacency, firing up frights with context and subtext far scarier than the jolt of a gnarled hand grabbing someone's shoulder. Almost undetected, the movie moves away from the typical thriller trappings its obvious surprise can't sustain anyway, and becomes a macabre fairy tale whose sad story slips inside a sympathetic mind and lingers there.

While the stagecraft creates a consistently creepy atmosphere, terrific performances provide the emotional impact. Halle Berry collects plentiful flowers for shedding her characteristic glamour to portray a haggard mother who bounces between attentively adoring and terrifyingly unhinged. Berry herself might nevertheless agree the real acting MVP is Percy Daggs IV as her youngest son Nolan. Daggs shows off an impressive range actors usually can't achieve until they're at least three times his age. He and Berry are both at their best in a heart-wrenching scene concerning the death of a dog certain to shake sensitive viewers.

Sensitive viewers should similarly be aware that "Never Let Go" also incorporates subjects such as suicide, matricide, and other types of -cide with sometimes shocking visuals and implications. Often bleak, this serious material stops the movie from being something someone might watch for fun. Whether it's approached as survivalist suspense or straightforward horror, bear in mind that the movie you might think you're getting may not be the movie it actually is, as "Never Let Go" packs a different punch than the one you see coming.

Review Score: 70

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