This report comes from Fantastic Fest 2024, the annual genre film festival held in Austin, Texas. We'll have more reports from the scene throughout the festival.
Alexandre Aja's gothic horror film Never let it go The film tries to play with audience expectations in clever ways. Halle Berry plays a harried woman (credited simply as “Mom”) raising young twins, Sam (Anthony B. Jenkins) and Nolan (Percy Daggs IV), in a rural cabin in the woods that she sees as the family's only defense against “the Evil.” In her telling, the ever-changing, omnipresent Evil has possessed everyone in the world except her and her children, and they have to observe certain rituals to keep it at bay, including being tied to the house's foundation with thick rope if they set foot outside its walls. Mom claims that even a single touch from a manifestation of the evil will permanently corrupt any of the family members.
From the beginning of the film, viewers are left wondering whether June is truly the last bastion of hope fighting to save her children or whether she is mentally ill and doing her best to instill her delusions in her children. Sam and Nolan disagree on this issue, which creates a major part of the film’s conflict. Regardless, Berry told the audience after a screening of the new film at Fantastic Fest that Mama is “fucking crazy.”
“Whatever you think is true after watching the movie, raising two kids in a house in the middle of the woods by yourself, you've gone crazy!” Berry said. “That's going crazy, right? That's going fucking crazy. So at the end of the day, because “She's crazy, that's not the point, you know? There's no denying it. She's crazy. She's been driven crazy for some reason, either because she was born that way or because she was made that way. She's struggling to keep everything under control.”
Image: Lionsgate Films/Everett Collection
Berry said the implied darkness — a character so damaged by experience that it doesn't matter whether those experiences are internal or external — is what drew her to the film in the first place.
“I love any time I can lose myself inside a character, forget who I am and put myself in someone else’s skin and character,” she said. “And it was very important, like Alex said when we first met. I talked about not losing the darkness of mom. I’ve played other mother roles and I’ve always been that mother who has fought for her children, and she’s been very close. And for me, this was a different mother. I wanted to get into the complexity of a mother.”
At one point in the film, viewers are given a strong hint that Mama was abused as a child, while other elements suggest that mental illness runs in her family and that if she suffers from delusions, it's a delusion that may have been passed down from a previous generation. Still, Berry noted, it's clear that Mama loves and is devoted to Sam and Nolan, even if that love is damaging to them.
“Putting aside all of its complexity and darkness, I related to that feeling of being a mother and giving birth to two children,” Berry said. “What connected me to this mother and this world was a beautiful tapestry to show, what it means to be a mother in any circumstance. And that’s why when I read the script and heard that Alex was going to direct, I was like, ‘Yeah, sign me up. ’”
Never let it go It's already in theaters.