Never Let Go

The elements that earn Never Let Go its age rating serve as content warnings as much as indicators. 'Strong horror, violence, injury detail, suicide, domestic abuse'. The first three are hallmarks of the work of Alexandre Aja, a veteran horror director for whom Never Let Go is a strong outing. The last is at once metaphor and metaphysic, part of a foundational dread that builds through the film.

Twins Samuel and Nolan live with their mother in a cabin in the woods. That's enough of a standard of genre that when visitors come calling we know it's unlikely they'll bring good fortune with them. So it proves, and repeatedly. For their mother tells them that there's evil out there. An evil that's worldly, one that will get them with a single touch. One from which they are protected I they follow the rules. The first of which ties them to that house, literally, a rule repeated at least seven times. "Never let go."

Three chapters: The rope is your lifeline; How will I feed my children?; What will become of us? Three people. Percy Daggs IV and Anthony B Jenkins are early in their careers. It's a feature début for Daggs, though his father (III) has a long TV CV, and Jenkins has another horror film out through Netflix this year. They're convincing in their chemistry, growing boys whose hunger for the world and what's within it is one of several sources of tension. Their mother (Halle Berry) has explained the world to them, set the rules. It is through her that we start to see the evil that lurks without, within. An evil that is sometimes in dolly zoom and creeping camera, that sometimes speaks with forked tongue from fallen trees. An evil held at bay by ties that bind, by that repeated instruction.

Inevitably the rules are broken. Not of genre, admittedly. Having set out its structures Never Let Go follows a usual pattern. Sadly that includes what I'd call cowardice with its complexity, allowing clouds of suspicion to develop into dampening certainty. There are jump scares, including one within establishing scenes. Their inevitability doesn't make them less startling, but does perhaps make them less satisfying.

Triumphal cheers for a squirrel become part of the score. Composer Robin Coudert (usually credited as ROB) has worked with Aja before, soundtracked other films, like Maniac. That repetition of detail includes things like the books on the mantlepiece, drawings on the wall, those ropes, inscriptions. For a while one might be tempted to try to determine date. One doubled element is the hood ornament of what's likely a 1957 Cadillac DeVille in the details. Later a certain folding mechanism will shed a different kind of light, before something establishes era with monolithic certainty.

That matters less as events unravel. Past a certain point the depth of deception vanishes into darkness. The 'when' matters less than the 'why' and then 'who' starts coming to the porch at night. "First it came to Momma as a snake," and all of that's repeated. The marks of word and worlds are in ink, illuminated by ritual. Animal cruelty isn't listed by the British Board of Film Classification but I will mention it as audiences often react differently to imperilled children than endangered wildlife. That subtlety of sympathy is part of what makes Never Let Go as difficult, as captivating. Tied up in its own mythology it is not enough to consistently capture, but it does enough to pull one along with it.

Berry's performance brings fraught flesh to a character who is often difficult. Hers is a strong performance in a film built around a tiny cast. The two playing her sons do a lot of good work, a sibling solidarity grounded by subtleties of interaction. That includes sound and shadow, sometimes a meaningful mutter, at others as clear as a bell. The film gives us clues to follow but rarely feels like it is stringing its audience along. Lines around victimhood are rarely clean. Here they're jagged and brittle, fearsome and fearful. In trying to tidy them, Never Let Go undercuts itself, turning something ragged and raw into something smoother and less satisfying.