Never Let Go

A solid horror thriller that is though just average to my mind. The story is just mostly too unbelievable to keep up the suspense. For fans of the genre.

I was ready to walk if she had killed the dog.

It's a mixture of Bird Box, Quiet Place and The Village. But it's not as good as any of these movies. Not great, not terrible.

Nolan was the only reasonable character up to the last second.

And either I didn't catch it or it was a plot hole, but was it explained as to why Samuel was able to get inside the house after being possessed?

Like the inside of my brain: it's giving a quiet place.

I really like Alexandre Aja and he directed this very well but the forced ambiguity didn't pique my curiosity, it popped my interest.

Unlike the title, this doesn't know when to let go. The performances gave me nothing but goosebumps. More goosebumps than any of the storytelling did. The opening sequence is the scariest bit, unfortunately. Half of your questions won't get answered, the other half is told in a tangle. Desolate visuals and eerie sounds pit you in isolation and drag you out. Each act gets progressively more insane and doubtful but at the cost of a truck full of tension. I loved the originality, but it was stuck in a bland and repetitive pace till it ended with in a generic, 'more questions than any answer' way.

A movie that is not bad, because it holds you, you want to know what’s going on, if it’s real or not, but it’s a forgettable movie, great performances, but forgettable.

Ropes dont work like that.

“Never Let Go” is one of those films that starts out with a strong premise, a concept packed with potential, but ends up tripping over its own ideas before it can turn any of it into something cohesive. Alexandre Aja, who’s already proven he knows exactly how to build claustrophobic tension and atmosphere in movies like “Crawl” (2019) and “Oxygen” (2021), tries to repeat the formula here—isolated setting, unseen threat, family tension—but what should’ve been a layered, intense psychological thriller turns into a messy mix of themes that end up colliding more than complementing each other.

The setup is solid: a mother (played by Halle Berry) lives with her two kids in a remote house, surrounded by woods where some kind of invisible threat lurks—an “entity” only she can see, which supposedly infects anyone who crosses the perimeter marked by a rope. The tension kicks in early, with a strict set of rules and an atmosphere that instantly brings to mind movies like “A Quiet Place.” The problem is that instead of focusing on and digging into one specific subtext—whether it’s grief, paranoia, trauma, or collective delusion—the film tries to touch on all of them at once. The result? A thriller with no real emotional anchor, where the overload of metaphors ends up smothering the story.

A big part of that falls on the script, which seems more interested in hinting at themes than actually exploring them. There are traces of commentary on pandemic isolation, overprotective parenting, how trauma warps perception… but nothing really goes deep. Everything stays on the surface, like the writers are asking the audience to “fill in the blanks,” but not giving us enough to work with in the first place. The issue isn’t ambiguity—which can be amazing when done well—it’s that the movie never quite decides what it wants to be. It lacks cohesion, and more importantly, narrative conviction.

Halle Berry, who basically carries the whole movie on her back, gives a performance that tries to be heavy but ends up feeling emotionally thin. Her character is supposed to be layered with pain, paranoia, and an ambiguity that keeps us constantly second-guessing her sanity. But what we get is kind of flat, without much nuance. Berry doesn’t exactly ruin the movie, but she also doesn’t turn her character into the magnetic force she needed to be. Everything feels kind of lukewarm, almost mechanical, like the character is just a cog in the plot machine instead of a fully alive, tormented person.

On the other hand, Aja still shows he knows what he’s doing when it comes to visuals. The smart use of space, wide shots contrasted with the house’s claustrophobic vibe, the well-timed jump scares, and especially the subtle background movements—all of that builds real unease in the viewer. His work with cinematographer Maxime Alexandre and composer Robin Coudert helps keep the tension simmering, even when the script doesn’t do its part. There’s a heavy atmosphere and a strong sense of lurking danger—but it all kind of floats there, without any real emotional or thematic payoff.

The third act does try to shake things up, calling the whole reality we’ve been shown into question—which could’ve led to a powerful ending—but again, the movie lacks the guts and depth to fully go there. It toys with the idea that the real threat might actually be the mother herself, both a victim and a trigger of some mental breakdown, but it never truly dives into it. And when the credits roll, instead of that lingering silence a good thriller leaves behind, what you get is a kind of emptiness. This isn’t the kind of movie that sticks with you for days—it’s the kind you forget hours later, like it never quite got off the ground.

All in all, “Never Let Go” is a great showcase of Aja’s technical skill and his knack for crafting visually striking spaces—but it’s also a frustrating example of how a film with too many intentions can end up with no real direction. The script lacked focus, the characters weren’t fully developed, and most of all, it lacked the courage to really dig into the themes it brought up. It’s a thriller that wants to be a metaphor, but forgets to tell a good story along the way. And no amount of atmosphere can fix that.