Never let Go (2024) - A Horror-B-Movie in theological view

by P. Martin Löwenstein SJ PhD, MA

"Never let go" (USA 2024) by Alexandre Aja with Halle Berry, Percy Daggs IV, Anthony B. Jenkins In German: Never let Go (2024) - Horror theologisch

There are better horror films. But this one is captivating not only because of the great acting of its three main characters and a coherent atmosphere. From a theological perspective, the horror of an obsessive family idyll is unfolded here, combined with the dualism that has apparently become epidemic in the USA (... evil coming from outside). The following film recommendation is only for lovers of the genre. But read this only after you've seen the movie: spoiler warning!

Evil lurks outside. The mother locks away the last remaining images of the old world in a box, before evil devoured everything. For a brief moment, a Bible can also be seen, which she locked away from her two sons, Sam and Nolan, who are around eleven years old. But did she realize that her own system would not work if one of the twins read the Bible?

Since she was a child, the mother had taught them that evil lurks in the vast forest outside, bringing death. As long as they stay connected to the sheltering hut in which the three of them live alone in the Canadian wilderness, they are protected from evil. The film's title refers to the fact that they must never loosen the rope that they wrap tightly around their bodies and that connects them to the hut. The connection to the hut is essential. At the same time, the rope defines the radius of action in the dangerous outside world. As soon as they leave the house, they have to tie it tightly around their bodies to protect themselves from evil. When they re-enter the hut, the mother forces them to touch the wood. They have to recite a magical text like a prayer, which ultimately amounts to an inversion of the biblical “Our home is in heaven” (Phil 3:20): “Heaven is home!”

The mother spins mythical stories and images around this dualism of evil outside and good inside, which are highly persuasive, but perhaps also simply highly manipulative. The two children hang on her every word. But doubt gnaws at Nolan. In addition, hunger leads all three of them not only to inner doubt, but also, quite literally, to the brink of starvation.

They never get further away from the house than the rope allows. And the little they find to eat there is not enough. In previous years, they collected enough over the summer to survive the winter. But this time, there is no way to avoid starvation. The little they find to eat in their confined world is not enough.

The emotional climax comes when the mother, as a last resort, decides to slaughter the dog. At this point, Nolan no longer participates. He tries to escape from the house with the dog and without the rope. The mother pursues him to the nearby glass house. There Nolan locks her in, cuts the rope that could save her... and there the terrible ghosts besiege her, which we had already seen from time to time in the background in the forest when we were in the mother's perspective.

Compared to other horror films, the mother's deceased parents and husband are not disproportionately creepy. But the horror is clear enough. It is the father disfigured by a violent death, the mother marked by poison, and her own husband who pursue her as death-defying terrors.
The boys see from the outside that evil has taken the mother. The mother lies dead in her blood. The twins are not entirely wrong in their conviction that their mother never lied to them. The danger is real. The horror is real. The three of them are undead. But one increasingly suspects that the evil that has driven the three undead ghosts to their deaths did not come from outside; the evil does not come from the forest, but lurks deep within the mother. On her back is a tattoo of a snake, which she hides from her children. Perhaps it is all just the evil that comes from her own heart. Mt 15:19: “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders...”

Was the suicide perhaps the one selfless act of the mother who had previously controlled everything? In the greenhouse, cornered by the ghosts of the past and her own guilt, she takes a shard and cuts her own throat to bleed to death. Perhaps she sensed that she had to do something and realized that she could no longer repress the evil on the outside. Her children are in danger. Their lives are in jeopardy. The mother had always given everything for her children. She had always guarded and protected them. But the real danger was in her own heart. It remains unclear whether she committed suicide to maintain the illusion of evil or to protect her children from what was slumbering within her.

The final cleansing does not take place in water, but in fire. The mother leaves the two boys with doubts as to whether the death she found in the greenhouse was the final proof that without being tied to a rope, evil will take hold of you. Nolan's doubts remain. But Sam is convinced that the harmless hiker who passes by the cabin one day and offers food is a ruse of evil. He shoots him with a crossbow. Since he suspects his brother Nolan of having been seduced by evil, he locks him in a room and burns down the house. Nolan survives because he hides in a box that the mother had used to lock the sons in until they had inwardly seen the evil threatening the family in a kind of spiritual exercise. Now Nolan is fighting there with the ghost of the mother, who turns into a snake. Nolan does not let go of the evil, embraces it until it dissolves.

In the final scene, the children are rescued by a helicopter and flown to the nearest settlement. It becomes clear that the mother's story that they are the last survivors in the forest was a lie. But is the evil that had such a firm grip on the mother overcome? Or does it place its cold hand on the shoulder of a child who has been so successfully forced by her mother into a pseudo-religious, dualistic world?