Halle Berry is not undeserving of the attention since the actress back in the game not so long ago played the first woman of color to take home a Best Actress Oscar in a movie that focuses around family violence that is followed by a ‘Fighter’ emotive role from Netflix which is her first directorial attempt. Apart from being an Academy Award winner, our recent in-person interview also confirms our suspicion that she, with time, does not age, or rather her skin looks the same even after so many years. Lucky her. And on this point, it’s mean to think that that Kiss of a Spider Woman is the only lady to ever bagged a Best Actress award and considering her recent culmination for Never Let Go surfaces picture of her worth such an award. About the movie’s name — no, it has no connection with Kate Winslet’s famous ‘I’m flying’ from Titanic, but it is one of the primary rules that the new film’s chronically anxious mother (Berry) enforces on her two young children every day when they go out into the wilderness and live dangerously. No spoilers though, however, Aja’s (Crawl) and KC Coughlin & Ryan Grassby’s various-thriller–Vaya’s-thriller turns out psychological thriller at its best though it is sick-story which we’ve seen sometime back procedures.
There have been other films in the past with the similar concepts being that sketchy parents go to extreme limits in protecting their children from things outside. In The Others (2001), Nicole Kidman was seen preventing her two children from exposure to sunlight. While the father in The Virgin Suicides (1999) was a teacher, the daughters were forbidden from going to school as their father (James Woods) had taken the overbearing approach.
Now there’s Never Let Go, a more dystopian and larger concept except that make-up-deprived Halle Berry plays the role of simply “Momma.” She lives in a dilapidated house at an isolated location. She has two children Samuel (Anthony B. Jenkins) and Nolan (Percy Daggs IV), and they go out in search of food and non-perishable items which will enable them to survive the cold winters but each of them is attached on a long rope made up to the house.
“Never let go, ” the boys chant, and then they walk out of the comfort that is most peoples’ homes. However, you find that even young, ambitious children gain a distaste for fearing Mother’s ploys about the evil outside. Then again the boys clearly fail to even comprehend why they encounter the dead monsters that formed and pursued them whenever one of them goes rogue and gets subdued, leaving the villainous constructs they now possessed with the license to chase after the feeble prey who had finished getting their chills out. Why do only Momma’s eyes have the capacity to perceive the nascent evil entities? Instead, do they just simply – dare they say – devices of her imaginative foggy-headedness in this very misty place they live?
True, this is the last time humanity will see the last of us who are scared because the very creature the phrase annihilationio has focused on for some time has been over the years and some other countries and some people may find the mon… Oh Never Let Go – it should not be confused with Never Let Me Go or Never Let Me Go which is also about dystopia. But, thankfully, Never Let Go – for confusion with the theatrical release called Never Let Me Go (2010) devoted to also quite a dystopian theme – compensates for some of the shortcomings with a number of outstanding advantages.
For one, rising stars Jenkins and Daggs undoubtedly show promise in Hollywood with their supporting turns here, and the script fortunately provides the brotherly roles with distinctive enough personalities. Nolan is more inclined to side with Momma for example when the rebellious Samuel is fighting to push down the somehow dreary restrictions they have to endure. Some people have an inner aggressor, while it seems that others like to have a vulture, like Nolan for instance, around.
In addition, you have Aja the director of Crawl (2019) supervising Never Let Go, therefore one would expect his latest undertaking to be filled with numerous hair-raising moments even when the evil ones are not present. And just because Halle Berry’s physical demeanor may lead up to critical disappointment as Gothika (2003), do not worry because Aja directs a deeper and layered performance on the Academy Award winner with Never Let Go. A potentially frightening sequence is when Berry’s momma sights her present husband William Catlett, who has the reputation of occasionally invading the property at night, and amplifying his wife’s overprotective nature by yelling at momma and asking her why she does not come outside and join him. It’s a disturbing tension-building game of verbal standoff that lingers in one’s mind.
This also makes for an interesting read because the story leaps to a startling twist before the real climax is even halfway through. And do not forget the hair-raising scene between the boys and an apparently harmless passerby in the woods (Matthew Kevin Anderson), soon overshadowed with a flash of a final shot that is worthy of an ad for possible continuation. Why not? So, look forward to seeing Berry stealing the show once again, whenever the time is appropriate for the commercial that proves her actuality won an Oscar so many years ago.
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