Critics Are Praising Halle Berry In Never Let Go, But Opinions Of The 'Eerie' Survival Horror Vary Overall

Halle Berry delivers what is a truly ego-less performance, as June is not a caring mother of the heartwarming variety. Her version of caring is based in ensuring the survival of her boys, and that takes some harsh forms. Her intensity and the measures she is willing to take can be accepted when balanced against the evil she says is waiting in the woods to take her children, but fractures in the veracity of her claims provides a very different kind of light, and it makes Berry one of the substantial sources of scary in the horror film.

If you meet the film halfway, Never Let Go becomes enjoyably compelling and eerie. Yes, there are a good amount of scares to be had here, as Aja has only perfected his sense of jumpscare timing as well as his knack for finding collaborators who can conjure up some truly unsettling demonic zombie creatures ... Of course, your mileage may vary, but Never Let Go feels like the type of film which only grows in one's estimation long after it's ended. It has its immediate, visceral pleasures, to be sure. But as the title suggests, it may stick in your mind for days (or longer) afterward, as it has done in mine.

The film also flirts with the idea of what evil truly is. Is it something we can see and that can take us over, or is it something that already exists within us, preying on our most troublesome thoughts and fears? It leaves the answers up to us, but the filmmaking team does a great job of establishing a sense of eerieness that never lets up, and the ending especially leaves us guessing and questioning everything that came before. Split into three distinct segments, Never Let Go can be captivating as it strips its characters down to primal instincts.

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.

Berry, who’s also a producer through her HalleHolly company, gives it her all. De-glammed almost to a feral degree and slipping in and out of a Southern accent, she deftly blurs the lines separating fiercely protective from paranoid and unhinged for much of the duration. But all her conviction can’t breathe substance into a story that’s way more complicated than complex and a movie that takes itself far more seriously than the material merits.