Alexandre Aja is one of today’s more exciting genre filmmakers. Making a name for himself with 2003’s incredibly intense “High Tension,” the director became a part of a new wave of horror filmmakers. As his career continued, Aja did the impossible. He helmed remakes of two seventies horror classics (Wes Craven’s “The Hills Have Eyes” and Joe Dante’s “Piranha”), making each film seem fresh and fun. Both were well received and did good business at the box office. His career was up and down once the bigger studios began to court him, but the director regained his footing with his exciting 2019 alligator Creature Feature “Crawl” and the 2021 thriller “Oxygen.” With this year’s dramatic woods-set horror piece, “Never Let Go,” it seems that Aja has lost his way once again. 

Audiences have experienced this type of film quite a lot over the past decade or more. If you have seen A Quiet Place, Bird Box, It Comes at Night, and Knock at the Cabin, you have seen this film. While those pictures took the same type of claustrophobic premise (people in isolation trying to survive an evil out in the woods) and made something interesting, Never Let Go doesn’t know what it wants to be. 

Halle Berry (a good actress so desperately in need of a film to match her talents) is a mother who lives with her two young sons in a cabin surrounded by woods. Every day, Mom warns Nolan (Percy Daggs IV) and Sam (Anthony B. Jenkins) about an evil force that exists outside. She tells her boys how “the Evil” lies waiting for them, and if it touches them, it will possess their souls and make them kill their families. Mom stresses that whenever any of them have to go outside, they must tie a rope around them and connect it to the house. Apparently, if they are tethered to their home, the bad in the world cannot touch them. The symbolism in this premise is embarrassingly obvious.

When Nolan begins to doubt the existence of wickedness only their mother can see, his curiosity to explore beyond their home (and without a rope) will endanger the family and smash their already unstable existence to pieces. 

As Nolan questions his mother’s sanity, Sam believes her. The conflict that ensues between them is ripe with possibilities, but the picture becomes frustrating in its lack of interest in amping up the drama. Aja wastes far too much screen time on the mystery of whether or not Berry’s character is out of her mind, forgetting to tighten the narrative. Aja and screenwriters KC Coughlin and Ryan Grassby begin the film quite nicely and make good use of their premise, crafting tension in the earlier scenes, slowly building on what promises to be a white-knuckled terror experience. Unfortunately, Never Let Go stops just as it is getting started, as the script piles on one ludicrous plot point after another and muddies its story with an overreliance on misdirection. 

As for the promised horror, the so-called frights are of the long-tired jump-scare variety. Loud music cues followed by something popping into the frame doesn’t scare a viewer, it startles them. While we see Berry’s character interacting with visual manifestations of the perceived evil, these moments are delivered so flatly, they become plodding. 

The film has merits, but its strengths are found in its technical aspects. Maxime Alexandre’s cinematography and Jeremy Stanbridge’s production design combine to give the film a creepy atmospheric quality. This is a horror film that wants to use its well-designed climate of uncertain fear to fuel the ambiguousness of its lead character. Style can only carry a film so long until substance eventually takes a hit. 

It becomes tiresome how the director toys with how viewers will experience Berry’s mental state. The constant “is she or isn’t she” becomes tiresome and somewhat fetishistic. The actress is passable in the role until she seems to lose her grip on the character. Whether the fault lies in the script or the actress’s inability to work out the intricacies of the role, Halle Berry’s performance does not work.

After endless scenes of mother becoming angry with her sons’ breaking of the rules, watching her scream at them while holding a knife to their throats, and hearing the trio recite the ridiculous purification saying over and over, the movie begins to completely fall apart. The repetitive nature of the screenplay, Aja’s direction, and Elliot Greenberg’s editing cause the film to lose any intended impact, until it all becomes frustratingly dull.

By the finale, the filmmakers have no clue what to do, throwing a “Hail Mary” pass by, shoving everything but the kitchen sink into the ending. A sloppy mix of horror styles, the unneeded introduction of two supporting characters, and a preposterously confused ending sink what is already a frustratingly uneven film. More questions are raised. None are answered. The audience is played for a fool.

Alexandre Aja knows how to make a horror film, but here, he fails to achieve the gripping tension he is known for. Never Let Go is a horror film that is not scary and a thriller that is without thrills.