31 Days of Halloween: Never Let Go

2024, Alexandre Aja (Horns) -- download

Its a pet peeve of mine, but I am not fond of movies that give you the choice of believing whether its a monster or supernatural being, or believing the person is just suffering mental health challenges. I am fine if you give the characters that choice, as that is a dominant trope in horror movies (given what people experience in horror movies, most people would think them off their rocker) but when the viewer is left feeling unsure, I get annoyed. There was the briefest of moments where I thought, "Yes, its explained, we are sure their is a monster," but then, thinking back on it, I was again left... unsure, and annoyed.

Momma (Hallee Berry, Gothika) lives in a remote Cabin in the Woods with her twin sons Samuel (Anthony B Jenkins, The Deliverance) and Nolan (Percy Daggs IV, Paradise). Upon introduction, you can see the boys are malnourished, food-wise and human interaction-wise. They are literally tethered to the house by ropes, long ropes that unfurl from a conduit under the house. In the woods, Momma constantly reminds, is The Evil and if they let go of the rope, it will get inside them and force them to kill each other, as it did their father, and her mother before them. Age ago, Momma reminds, the world fell to evil and her father built the house away from wicked people, and The Evil, and imbued upon it a ritual of magic, wherein the blessings of the wood of the house protect those within its light or tethered to its heart. They live by this hard-and-fast rule.

But its been a hard winter. The green house's abundance has died off, the animals they hunt did not return in the spring, and the family has resorted to eating whatever they find, including bugs, grubs and frogs. And eventually bark, once the pickled and preserves run out. The (un)dead constantly torment Momma, telling her its all her fault, that she did this all on her own, she let The Evil in, she brought it with her. The boys unwavering faith in their mother is beginning to shake, and she herself is beginning to break. When she suggests them killing and eating the family dog, Nolan loses it, cutting her rope before she can put a crossbow bolt into the dog. She is severed from the protection of the house, and instead of letting The Evil in, she cuts her own throat. Kodda the dog runs off.

Without Momma the boys completely unravel. A stranger appears on their doorstep, a hiker who has become lost. At first, he's a bit concerned to see such a ragged pair of boys alone in the woods but then they point the crossbow at him. He tries to escape but.... that is when things become unsure. The man has a cell phone, a working one that makes a call through to 911 before he succumbs to the bolt in his gut. If the world outside has collapsed, then what is this all about? Was Momma lying all along? Was she being metaphorical, and if so, weren't her responses unreasonable, or was she just completely lost, a victim of familial abuse and trauma? The boys cannot know any of this, so only we can speculate. Considering the boys are starving and likely poisoned by what they have been forced to eat, anything that comes after, including a deceptive snake girl, is suspect. I continued to watch as a monster movie, but... the annoyance seeped in.

In the end, the houses is burned down, but not before the boys are ... rescued. The outside world is there, it is not destroyed. But The Evil is now in Sam and Nolan knows it. What are we to believe? Everything is left to speculation, but there was a giant snake skin found on the river side, a moulted sign of something very very large, much larger than can be found in woods like this. So, is there Evil or is there just .... evil? Bah, some questions can be fun, but I am just annoyed.

But I cannot just leave it there, can I? There was much I did enjoy -- the setting, the built up mythology and the dressing up of the environment. Aja had fun constructing this movie, giving us something that felt both magical and mundane, current yet timeless in its depiction of how the family lived. Berry is always more than capable and the boys excelled at playing the twins they were, but with their own personalities, children growing into adolescents, discovering independence and it not weighing well on their shoulders.