‘Never Let Go’ Review | Halle Berry Terrifies, but This Horror Movie Grasps at Straws

Imagine if Halle Berry told you the world just ended, and now you have to live out in the woods. Also you have to stay in Halle Berry’s house or else an evil force will get you. Also if you do leave, you have to be tied to Halle Berry’s house by a rope or else — again — the evil will get you. Also only Halle Berry can see the evil. Oh, and the protective power of Halle Berry’s house has to be recharged like a battery, and recharged with your love, so she’s going to have to repeatedly lock you in the cellar with the lights off until you give off the right vibes.

That’s the premise of Alexandre Aja’s horror thriller “Never Let Go,” and if you think about it, it’s a pretty kooky way to tell a story about faith. Scary movies like “Never Let Go” and “Knock at the Cabin” are close personal cousins to family films like “Miracle on 34th Street” and “Harvey.” In every single one of them the characters — and the audience — are asked to believe something unbelievable. If it’s a delusion, what does it say about the people who believed it? If it’s real, what does it say about the people who didn’t?

“Never Let Go” stars Berry as Mama, a woman living alone in the woods with her two young sons, Samuel (Anthony B. Jenkins, “The Deliverance”) and Nolan (Percy Daggs IV, “The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey”). Her kids believe every bizarre and horrifying thing their mother tells them, because why wouldn’t they? All they know is that you’re not allowed to leave the house unless you’re physically tied to it. That’s their reality.

In the audience, however, we can’t help but notice some serious red flags. Nolan has reached a curious age, and he’s starting to have doubts too. When he accidentally sleepwalks outside the house in the middle of the night, without a protective magic rope, nothing happens. He was led to believe that an evil force would attack him, but if it didn’t, does that mean his mother isn’t telling the truth? Can she really see demonic spirits, which would be a serious problem, or does she have very different, also serious problems? And if she’s not well, what can anybody do about it?

It’s easy to get distracted by the ideology behind a film like “Never Let Go” because Alexandre Aja gives us a lot of time to think about it. A lot of “Never Let Go” is about the family just surviving in the wilderness. Sometimes they bicker. Sometimes they have to eat tree bark when they can’t catch any animals. It takes a long time for a plot to actually kick in, so until then we’re expected to just watch and wonder if we’re supposed to believe in any of this. After a while the only thing to do is throw up your hands wait patiently, because until “Never Let Go” actually shows its hand and confirms if it’s either about power or dangers of faith — in religion or, more directly, in our parents — we (ironically) don’t have much to hang on to.

The script by Kevin Coughlin and Ryan Grassby (“Mean Dreams”) gives Aja a lot of weird imagery to play with, and cinematographer Maxime Alexandre (“Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City”) makes eerie work of the desolation, the shadowy rooms, the brambly forests, the grim — possibly real — specters. Love and distrust are also caked into the story, giving Berry and Jenkins and Daggs lots of fraught, juicy scenes full of character and emotion. Berry has a wiry energy, recognizable as either a sleep-deprived, overly anxious parent or a wicked, wicked witch, depending on how each scene is modulated. She’s perfectly matched by Jenkins and Daggs, impressive performers who seem desperate and haunted.

But this material lives and dies based on how it all ends up, and it’s rude to give away the ending of a movie, but suffice it to say, “Never Let Go” ends on a frustrating note. The climax hits dramatic highs, no doubt about that, but what it has to say about literally anything we just watched is frustratingly elusive. It’s a film that wants to have its cake, eat its cake, regurgitate its cake, and eat the cake again. And when it’s all done it claims it still has cake, but by that point we just watched them do so much weirdly noncommittal stuff with cake that it’s hard to care anymore.

“Never Let Go” takes the promise of a scary and challenging film about believing in evil, believing in your parents, believing in your parents’ beliefs, and believing what we can actually prove, but it’s a promise half-fulfilled. Aja’s eerie direction and the truly superb cast elevate the material but they can only take this story so far because it is — ironically (again) — tethered to a frustrating tale. ‘

“Never Let Go” wants to do everything and winds up accomplishing very little. It may freak you out a little bit, and that may be enough for some people, but it only briefly grabs hold of something significant. Then it lets go.

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