Here’s How Halle Berry Horror ‘Never Let Go’ Gets Under Your Skin

One of the things that makes director Alexandre Aja's tense survival horror thriller Never Let Go so effective is that it hasn't been spoiled by marketing that gives the game away before audiences have even put their butts in movie theater seats. The filmmaker is tired of it.

"It's true," he confirms as we chat over Zoom the morning after his latest film premiered in New York. "Before being a filmmaker, I love to go and see movies, and a lot of times I have been spoiled by too much exposure. I get the feeling that I've seen the whole story, so when I'm watching the movie, I know what's coming, what should happen, and when it will happen. I have to say that I really appreciate the fact that we managed to keep our cards close to our chest and not reveal too much of what we have."

Never Let Go stars Halle Berry as a mother of two young boys who lives deep in the woods, trying to protect her family from the dangers of the world outside. However, they are being haunted by an evil spirit that inhabits the forests, threatening them and their home. When one of the boys starts to question what their mother has been telling them, things start to unravel. Never Let Go lands in theaters on Friday, September 20, 2024.

"I saw this opportunity of creating a very rich, layered, textured world of a dark fairy tale," Aja explains. "It has this mother living deep in the woods with her kids and all the elements that could come from the imagination, but also the real, grounded aspect of living and the greed. We also don't give too much about where we are or when we are placing the story. The script did this fine-tuned job of keeping the reader figuring out what was happening."

"When I finished it, I felt very satisfied and felt like, Oh, I have all the answers, and I read it in a very specific way.' Then, talking to other people, I realized that some other people had a different read and interpretation of the story of what the evil is. Is it completely real or not? Keeping this multi-interpretation element alive through the experience was interesting, maintaining a duality. Going back to more gothic literature, like Edgar Alan Poe, there are a lot of great short stories where both explanations are living together. There's a supernatural explanation and a grounded explanation."

The Dog Played A Vital Role In Ramping Up The Tension

While maximizing what he did with Berry and his young cast, Anthony B. Jenkins and Percy Daggs IV, on set, the director created much of Never Let Go's power through smart and highly effective editing. The director, whose previous films include Crawl, Pirahna, and The Hills Have Eyes, knew that was going to be the case from the get-go, and it was proven to him in test screenings.

"I feel that the editing process, as usual, is a key process with any film, but this one maybe more so specifically in terms of the amount of information conveyed and given to the audience and the economy of that information," Aja explains. "I remember when we had the first cut, and we presented it for the first time to an audience; we really went with almost nothing, and by that, I mean even less information, just to see what people thought. Then, it was all about giving enough to keep people wondering and connecting the dots. All the elements are there; everything you need to understand is in the movie, but there is a little bit more of a proactive request for the audience to put it together and figure out the big story."

Another ace up the filmmaker's sleeve when it came to putting and keeping audiences on the edge of their seats was the role that the family's dog played. The emotional stakes are arguably at their highest when the dog's life is threatened.

"Test audiences were always very responsive to what was playing out on screen, and some very dark stuff was happening to all our characters in the movie, but especially when it came to the dog. I knew going in that it would be a scene that would put people in a very tense position," Aja recalls. "Somehow, the dog is so much more than just a dog. The dog is always this kind of symbol of innocence, and that's why you can never, really, you know, do anything to a dog. When the movie goes there. I knew people were very going to react in a strong way. At the premiere, I could feel the energy in the room when it got to the dog being threatened, that people were really like, 'Agh, what's going to happen?' You could hear a pin drop in the room."

How Being A Parent Influenced Berry And Aja Making 'Never Let Go'

Both Berry and the director are parents. Because family is at the heart of the story, could either have made such a compelling movie if they hadn't experienced the fear and joy of parenthood themselves?

"That's absolutely a fair question, and I don't think I would have made the same movie if I was not a parent at that point," he reveals. "A lot of the questions that are in the story and that Halle's character is going through are questions that went through my mind as I was parenting. It was about how much you want to protect your kids, how much you want to keep them close and home, or in this case, on the rope, and if you do so, are you just not infecting them with your own fear and personal past? How can you make sure that they become their own person, and they're not just repeating the same patterns or generational trauma that might happen in families?"

"Before I was a parent, I would have done a movie more through the eyes of the kids because, before being a dad, I was a kid. That was the other aspect that I really loved exploring through Never Let Go. There are two kids: one believes everything the mother says, and the other starts questioning. That is a place where I've been, and we all have been at some point. It's a very interesting journey for any kid to go through questioning their own parents and at some point managing, or not, to cut the rope."

Never Let Go's ending leaves a door open for more stories to be told with the world Aja and writers KC Coughlin and Ryan Grassby have created. However, there is only one film in his catalog of work that the director has ever made a sequel to, although others have made sequels to his movies, and that is the 2019 natural horror film Crawl. Why was that the one that he wanted to return to?

"I have always wanted to. With The Hills Have Eyes, I felt very sad not to be able to do a sequel we talked about back then. It was the same with Piranha. I wanted to tell more stories about Pirahna and definitely not the one they did," he concludes. "On Crawl, right away I was like, 'Oh, there's so much more we can do in the water with alligators, storms, and hurricanes,' and we've been working on that for a long time. We're not doing it right now, but maybe next year. It feels like it's the right time. It feels like we're ready to make it awesome."