“Never Let Go” is finally here.
And the new supernatural thriller from French filmmaker Alexandre Aja (“Crawl,” “High Tension”) is built around an ingenious concept: a woman (Halle Berry) and her two children (Percy Daggs IV and Anthony B. Jenkins) live alone in a cabin deep in the woods. According to her, a malevolent presence haunts the woods and society has fallen as a result of it. She makes a series of rules for their survival, like being tethered to the house by a rope at all times (their dog wears a rope around its waste too, kind of like Chewbacca and his bandolier).
But is she nuts? Or are these really these things out there?
That is something that is played with for much of the movie’s runtime. And it leads to one of the more shocking moments of the film (and, really, any film in recent memory). TheWrap spoke to director Aja about this moment.
Major spoiler warning. Seriously. Turn back now and return to this article after you’ve watched (you don’t have to wear a rope around your waist).
For much of the film Berry’s character is most explicitly dealing with this supernatural evil. This leads the boys to question their mother’s sanity and whether or not the world is actually over, outside their home.
But about an hour into the movie, all hell breaks loose. One of the kids cuts his mother’s rope. And she is confronted by the ghosts of those she killed in the name of protecting her children, including her husband. For Berry the worst thing is to be “infected” with the evil. (If “Never Let Go” was not meant to directly invoke COVID, well, it did so anyway.)
When confronted by one of these ghosts, it gets closer and closer to touching her. But instead of giving into the malevolence, she takes a piece of broken glass and cuts her throat. That’s it. The movie’s biggest star exits about an hour into the film. This is, of course, a hallmark of the genre, established by Alfred Hitchcock offing Janet Leigh less than an hour into “Psycho.” It was a neat trick and one that has been repeated many times since, like Angie Dickinson in “Dressed to Kill” and Drew Barrymore in “Scream.”
Aja said that the moment was “always in the script” during an interview with TheWrap, praising the screenplay by Kevin Coughlin and Ryan Grassby.
“The script had a few twists but this one is the one I definitely did not see coming,” Aja said. “I was sold on it right away.” Aja loved that it pulled the “cover right under the feet of everyone at that point.” That was what was supposed to happen at that point in the story, but it’s one that could have easily been removed or downplayed. He said that this moment was what the movie was “building up to.”
“I’m happy that we didn’t have to change that,” Aja explained. “It was always very protected.” (One of his producers was Shawn Levy, one of the producers on “Stranger Things,” so he knows what it takes to kill off a beloved character.)
And yes, it is extremely shocking. But it also works to destabilize the audience for the rest of the movie’s run time (there’s still about 40 minutes of Berry-free horror). If that could happen, then anything could happen. And anything does.
“Never Let Go” is in theaters now.
