Once upon a time, a mom and her two sons lived in a house in the woods, and never went into the woods without holding onto a rope for dear life—until the kids got old enough to ask questions about this odd state of affairs. That, in essence, is the premise of Never Let Go, the latest film from director Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes). Momma (Halle Berry) and her kids Samuel (Anthony B. Jenkins) and Nolan (Percy Daggs IV) seem to be living way, way off-grid—in fact, maybe there isn’t even a grid anymore. Maybe the world ended. Maybe there are monsters in the woods that will get them if they ever let go of the rope.
Maybe not.
It’s a little hard to look at a premise like this and not think things like, “Wait, how many people died before they figured out the rope thing?” which then might lead a person to think, “Ah, yes, I see, the rope thing is not a real thing.” The trailer does seem to show monsters and creepy creatures (too many hands! too many hands!) but trailers are notoriously tricksy. As an Entertainment Weekly piece asks:
What, exactly, are those monsters? Are the snakes we glimpse in the trailer real or symbolic? Berry, understandably, doesn’t want to spoil what’s to come when asked about what caused the end of the world. “That’s a big reveal of the movie that we shouldn’t give away,” she says, coyly.
At any rate, Never Let Go joins a whole host of movies in which cabins are not a good place to be (Cabin in the Woods, Knock at the Cabin) and/or moms are having a really rough go of it post-(maybe) apocalypse (A Quiet Place, Bird Box). You can visit this terrifying cabin in theaters on September 27th.
