I’ve seen my share of films that take place in a house in the woods. It’s been a staple of the horror genre for years. The Cabin in the Woods, The Evil Dead, and Misery come to mind when I think of this subgenre of horror films. The latest movie in this sub-genre is Never Let Go. It’s from the director behind Crawl, Alexandre Aja. He knows how to capture the high tension in this type of film. 

A mother (Halle Berry) and her two twin sons Samuel (Anthony B Jenkins) and Nolan (Percy Daggs IV) live in a house in the woods. They are haunted by an “evil” that makes them stay tethered by rope to their house. Their house is a safe place for them, but when the “evil” gets a hold of one of the boys it causes problems for this mother who is already hanging on by a thread. Her motherly instincts start to kick in, but is it too little too late?

Aja is a director who can dial up the pressure in an instant. He was able to combine a hurricane with bloody-thirsty alligators in Crawl. Here he and the writers KC Coughlin and Ryan Grassby, create a story that is a bit strange but kept me interested throughout this film. An invisible “evil” is sometimes visualized as dead people in the eyes of Berry’s character. They are deceased family members. It’s a bit confusing what happened to them. They are just one of the threats the “evil” poses for the boys and their mother.

The technical aspects of this movie are pretty good. The cinematography, costumes, makeup, and hairstyling are some of the best parts of the movie. There are many scenes of the woods the house is surrounded by that look pretty creepy, when ghosts appear that look pretty nasty, especially a character that is described as Berry’s character’s mother. She had a split tongue like a snake. I was creeped out by her and other ghosts in the movie. The costumes are what you’d expect from a family living away from civilization for many years. The kids are wearing hand-me-down clothes from their father who passed away. The costumes fit the characters and the vibe of the film.

With this being a horror thriller that has to be elements that make the viewers invested in the story. That’s where the movie lost me a bit. The story was a bit hard for me to get behind after the halfway point in the film. There is a big moment at the halfway point that changes the complexity of this movie. Aja and the writers tried doing something different that would be surprising, but it didn’t work. 

The movie had three chapters 1: This Rope is Your Lifeline, 2 How Will I Feed My Kids, and 3: What Will Become of Us Now? These chapters pretty much describe the mental state of the characters and where the story is going. This was a good thing because I gave the audience an idea of what was going on. This story was a bit all over the place where a lot of ideas were thrown against the wall to see what would stick. With Berry involved as a producer, this was obviously a passion project for her. It just didn’t work in all phases for me.

Never Let Go is an interesting title for a horror thriller. From my perspective, I wanted to like this film and the three main characters. I just lost faith in the story and everything Aja and the writers were doing. The cast was good with the two boys almost outshining the Academy Award winner Halle Berry.  The technical aspects were good, but the story was all over the place. There were a few scary moments, but not enough to keep me engaged throughout. The twist threw me off a bit, but it wasn’t enough to make me fully embrace what everyone was doing in this film. As they say, they gave it the old college try.

2 ½ stars

Dan Skip Allen