By Sara Bright
In a secluded house deep in the woods, a mother and her two sons live by a single, desperate rule. To venture outside, they must tether themselves to the house with a long, thick rope and never, under any circumstances, let go. In Alexandre Aja’s survival horror, Never Let Go, this rope is the only thing protecting the family from a nameless Evil that seeks to poison them against each other.
The premise immediately sows a seed of doubt. Is the threat real, or is the mother, played by Halle Berry, a paranoid woman whose elaborate safeguards are starving her children and leading them toward a different kind of doom? The film builds its initial tension on this ambiguity. Predictably, this psychological friction becomes the story’s main conflict, pitting the older son’s emerging skepticism against his younger brother’s unwavering faith in their mother’s doctrine.
Familiar Echoes in the Woods
This clash between rational thought and rigid tradition is fertile ground for horror, but the film renders it in schematic and predictable strokes. Aja seems more interested in startling visions and the ominous forest than in the potentially complex relationships of his characters. The ghost of “Hansel and Gretel” haunts the narrative, a connection amplified by composer Robin Coudert, who also scored the similarly themed Gretel & Hansel.
Perhaps a more telling comparison is to the animated miniseries Over the Garden Wall, which masterfully explored the archetype of young boys lost in an enchanted forest. But where that series found depth and irony, Never Let Go abandons its dramatic potential, leaving its core ideas underdeveloped.
A Star’s Gamble
The film’s sense of creative inertia might be explained by its long and troubled journey to the screen. The script languished for years in development, at one point attracting director Mark Romanek. Had he remained, his filmography would have contained a clever, if accidental, joke: Never Let Go appearing right after his 2010 film, Never Let Me Go.
Instead, the project fell to Halle Berry, for whom this film feels less like an artistic choice and more like a calculated career move. It’s hard not to view her role here in the shadow of her recent professional stumbles. Her sci-fi film The Mothership was completed and then shelved permanently by Netflix in early 2024. Moonfall was a notorious flop, and the spy comedy The Union was quietly released on a streaming service.
Given this context, Berry’s decision to not only star but also produce Never Let Go seems like an attempt to regain control. It’s no surprise she has already begun talking about turning the film into a franchise, likely seeing a potential prequel as a better vehicle for her talents.
The Director’s Return
For director Alexandre Aja, a French filmmaker who made his name in Hollywood by successfully remaking Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes, the film is another exercise in genre mechanics. His work often feels secondary, skillfully assembling parts from other, better movies – from the claustrophobic dread of Peter Weir to the high-concept horror of A Quiet Place and Bird Box.
In a sense, Never Let Go is a homecoming. Its final twist echoes the one that made his name in the brutal French thriller High Tension. After years of proficient but impersonal work in the Hollywood system, it feels as though the Parisian director has finally found his way back, for better or worse, to the kind of filmmaking that defined his beginnings.
