Summary:

Forced to live in isolation, two brothers grow to question their survivalist mother’s claim that they can never leave their home due to an unknown evil that corrupted the rest of the world.

Review:

“Never Let Go” isn’t based on a book, but it certainly seems like its structure would be better suited for the printed page. The movie’s first act relies heavily on narration from a character speaking solely for the audience’s benefit. This isn’t automatically an issue, although a retroactive hiccup burps a bit when one realizes his voiceovers don’t exist anywhere else in the movie. Still, narrators can be used to express a perspective from a particular person, offering insight into someone’s thoughts that can’t be conveyed through conversation or onscreen actions aside from watching them write in a journal.

Except “Never Let Go” doesn’t do this. “Never Let Go” uses narration to deliver extensive exposition, which certain cinema scholars argue is a cheat at best and verboten at worst since film is a visual medium for telling a story. Because this specific setting requires detailed “rules” regarding its background, this puts the script between a rock and a hard place for getting viewers up to speed. The rock would be choosing to have actors unrealistically speak in explanatory sentences like, “Hey big sis, it’s been three months since dad went to Egypt with his new wife. When do you think he’ll be back from his mystery billionaire-funded expedition to that cursed tomb where those slaves died?” “Never Let Go” opts for the hard place, where the film instead says, “Eh, let’s just have a disembodied voice spell out essential information.”

Over opening scenes of a mother raising her two sons Samuel and Nolan in a remote woodland cabin, one of the boys tells us how the three of them came to live their lives in isolation. Once upon a time, Grandma claimed an evil presence was corrupting the world. No one believed her except Grandpa. To protect their family, he built a blessed house out of sacred wood. Knowing they’d need to forage for food in the nearby forest, he also tied ropes to the home’s foundation, giving them a tether to stop the evil from touching them when they went outside.

Momma inherited the house along with the duty to keep their family away from the contagious destruction supposedly surrounding them. Momma repeatedly warns the brothers about the evil’s manipulative tactics. It can take the form of anyone in its efforts to lure them away from the house and possess them, although only Momma can see the ghoulish figures it mimics.

Nolan might be the younger brother, but he’s now of an age where Momma’s insistence about an unseen terror grows more suspicious each day. Samuel remains steadfast in trusting Momma’s strict instructions, yet Nolan wonders, what if the outside world isn’t unsafe like Momma claims? What if there isn’t anything special about the ropes they tie around their waists for protection? What if he challenges Momma to finally find out if the evil even exists at all?

Is Momma right about an unknown malevolence threatening them or has she needlessly sentenced her kids to solitude because her delusional mind is overcome by a paranoid fantasy? Once this plot takes shape, “Never Let Go” saddles its story with a bridle more burdensome than any minor miffs about narration. Anytime a horror movie introduces a seemingly crazy character who makes seemingly crazy claims, especially if they’re either committed to an insane asylum or confronted by a disbelieving family member, that person always, always, always turns out to be telling the truth, whether it’s about the existence of a ghost, a vampire, an alien, or whatever else no one but them believes. “Never Let Go” takes that trope and turns it into an entire movie where the mystery of what’s really going on isn’t really much of a mystery at all.

Unexpectedly, the movie overcomes this inherent flaw in its fiction by gradually trading attempts at suspense for increasingly intense interactions between the three main players. Unlike a film whose impact hinges largely on how well it hides a shocking twist, “Never Let Go” isn’t designed around its reveal. It’s designed around the family drama driving its themes of grief, regret, fear, and complacency, firing up frights with context and subtext far scarier than the jolt of a gnarled hand grabbing someone’s shoulder. Almost undetected, the movie moves away from the typical thriller trappings its obvious surprise can’t sustain anyway, and becomes a macabre fairy tale whose sad story slips inside a sympathetic mind and lingers there.

While the stagecraft creates a consistently creepy atmosphere, terrific performances provide the emotional impact. Halle Berry collects plentiful flowers for shedding her characteristic glamour to portray a haggard mother who bounces between attentively adoring and terrifyingly unhinged. Berry herself might nevertheless agree the real acting MVP is Percy Daggs IV as her youngest son Nolan. Daggs shows off an impressive range actors usually can’t achieve until they’re at least three times his age. He and Berry are both at their best in a heart-wrenching scene concerning the death of a dog certain to shake sensitive viewers.

Sensitive viewers should similarly be aware that “Never Let Go” also incorporates subjects such as suicide, matricide, and other types of -cide with sometimes shocking visuals and implications. Often bleak, this serious material stops the movie from being something someone might watch for fun. Whether it’s approached as survivalist suspense or straightforward horror, bear in mind that the movie you might think you’re getting may not be the movie it actually is, as “Never Let Go” packs a different punch than the one you see coming.

Review Score: 70