Never Let Go review.
Alexandre Aja’s latest has all the pieces to make for a solid movie. It’s missing that extra something to deliver more.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Never Let Go
Directed by Alexandre Aja
Written by Kevin Coughlin and Ryan Grassby
Starring Halle Berry, Percy Daggs IV, Anthony B. Jenkins, Matthew Kevin Anderson, Christin Park and Stephanie Lavigne
Never Let Go Review
Alexandre Aja is no stranger to delivering good genre movies. The director brought us, among others, Piranha 3D, Crawl and the remake of The Hills Have Eyes that is way better than it has any right to be. With Never Let Go he delivers a solid, if ultimately unspectacular, horror movie. In fact, there’s no aspect of Never Let Go that isn’t good…aside from an underwhelming third act. That’s enough to keep it from reaching its potential. It sits in stark contrast to the overwhelmingly incredible third act delivered by a movie opening in theaters the same day.
A mother (Halle Berry) and her twin sons a life of structure and discipline after the world ended. They scavenge for food as far as the ropes attached to their house will let them. If you ever let go of the rope…the evil will get you. At least, that’s what Nolan (Percy Daggs IV) and Samuel (Anthony B. Jenkins) have been raised to believe. Nolan begins to doubt his mother’s stories when Samuel becomes untethered…and nothing happens. As their food begins to run out…the family becomes more desperate…and Nolan becomes more certain there is a world beyond his rope.
The script does a fine job keeping the mystery afloat. For every moment that points in one direction there is an answer that points in the other. From the mother’s perspective…something is out there. We can see it. We watch her interact with it. Her backstory paints a stark warning against breaking her rules. Her husband, mother and father were touched by the evil she sees…and she killed them all. The issue for Nolan (and us) is that she is the only one who can see it. It’s a clever way to provide horror imagery while allowing us to question if what the mother sees is really there.
Halle Berry is very good in the role. She’s convincing as the doomsayer who is desperate to keep what remains of her family safe. Nolan may question whether his mother has made up these stories to keep them from leaving their home in the middle of the woods…but we never question it. Whether it’s happening or not…the mother BELIEVES it to be true. Berry sells it with a great mix of fear and fierce conviction. Knowing that she believes it is a key aspect of making Never Let Go work. The things she claims sound impossible. Yet, she clearly believes what she is saying.
Aja, as usual, directs a quality looking picture. He understands this genre and gets the most out of a script without a lot of flash. What it has is good performances and a mystery interesting enough to sustain the first two acts. He wisely leans into both and produces a solid build to a payoff that, unfortunately, fails to deliver. We get our answers…and they are unsatisfactory at best. Never Let Go spends its final half hour attempting to have its cake and eat it too…repeatedly. It comes with an extra layer of disappointment given that it follows the film’s best, most unexpected moment. Aja builds an hour meant to give way to an exciting, unpredictable ending. It fizzles out instead.
Without getting into what is wrong with final act of Never Let Go…we’ll look at why it went wrong. After posing an intriguing question it decides to double back on its answer repeatedly. This happens no less than four times. While the movie should be kicking into a higher gear as it commits to its final direction…Never Let Go instead zig zags itself back and forth between answers wanting to be all things all the time to all people. It does a disservice to the quality work put in by the cast and crew. Without a worthwhile destination…the journey isn’t as worth it.
Never Let Go has all the individual elements to provide a perfectly watchable experience. It fails to elevate beyond that despite the quality of work put in behind, and in front of, the camera. It’s a script issue. While the first hour or so of the movie isn’t the most exciting thing in the world…it is interesting enough to keep you locked in. When the story starts to waver on what it wants to show you…Never Let Go starts to fall apart.
There’s no point in asking an engaging question when you are going to fumble the answer the way this story does. Even with an interesting enough concept at play…the endgame is told in a way that annoys far more than thrills. It’s like it took what worked about the mystery and decided to put it in fast forward with bigger swings at each turn. The opposite of what Aja builds up to…undoing a lot of good work in the process.
Scare Value
Never Let Go is less than the sum of its parts. Halle Berry is good. Daggs and Jenkins are good. The mystery is good. The production is good. The result is a decent movie. It’s a great third act away from being something more. A couple of surprising moments can’t make up for a climax that doesn’t thrill to the level it should given how long it’s built up to. Instead, Never Let Go gets dragged down to the mushy middle of genre fair despite the quality efforts of its cast and crew.
2.5/5
Never Let Go Link
Buy ticket on Fandango
