Movie Review

Halle Berry tries for a comeback in film thriller Never Let Go

Anthony B. Jenkins, Halle Berry, and Percy Daggs IV in Never Let Go.

Photo courtesy of Lionsgate

Halle Berry has been a bankable movie star for over 30 years, dating back to her co-starring role in the 1992 Eddie Murphy film, Boomerang. Lately, though, it feels as if the Oscar winner has been coasting on reputation alone, starring in and directing the middling Bruised, and having lead roles in the forgettable Moonfall and recent Netflix movie, The Union.

She’s looking for a comeback of sorts in the new horror/thriller, Never Let Go. Berry plays Momma, who lives in a cabin in the woods with her two sons, Samuel (Anthony B. Jenkins) and Nolan (Percy Daggs IV). The family doesn’t have access to food other than what they can grow and catch, and it’s clear their supply is dwindling. Matters aren’t helped by the fact that anytime the three of them want to venture outside of the house, Momma insists that they tie a rope to their bodies, which only allows them to go so far.

Momma maintains that there’s an evil presence in the forest, and if they ever let go of their ropes while outside, they will be infected by the evil. Both sons are initially shown to trust fully in their mom’s beliefs, but Nolan soon becomes skeptical and starts testing the boundaries. Is there actually evil all around them, or has Momma succumbed to a mental illness that will bring them all down eventually?

Written and directed by Alexandre Aja, the film initially seems like it will be suspenseful, with Momma and her boys doing whatever it takes to survive, whether there is an actual evil presence or not. But after a solid start, the story starts to become repetitive, as there’s only so much you can do with one location and three characters. While their hunger plight does move the story forward to a degree, it’s not enough to make it fully engrossing.

Then there are the standard, and somewhat silly, scares Aja throws at the audience. Apparitions that only Momma can see appear to her as zombie versions of her dead mother, father, and husband. Since they can’t see them, the boys don’t react in the slightest anytime the ghosts make an appearance, lessening the fear factor. The ghosts also have weird, snakelike tongues that they waggle in what’s supposed to be a menacing way, but the gesture is more comically weird than spooky.

Aja lays a lot of the story on the boys’ shoulders, and even though both actors have decent professional experience at such a young age, it proves to be too much dramatic weight to put on them. The anxiety, uncertainty, and anger that they’re asked to display would be a lot to ask of much older performers, and when they’re occasionally forced into scenes alone, the film grinds to a halt.

Berry has always been a very emotive actor, and while that has served her well in other roles, it doesn’t work at all in this film. Her character is required to be hysterical much of the time, and the lack of warmth or empathy toward the kids makes Momma less interesting. Jenkins and Daggs are good in small doses, but they’re not ready to be the actual stars of a film like this.

It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly where Never Let Go went wrong, but a bit more information or perspectives from outside of the house might have been warranted. As it stands, the film falls flat for most of its running time, a big problem since the point of it would seem to be to make it tension-filled and scary.

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Never Let Go is now playing in theaters.

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Movie Review

Animated Disney film Elio is fun but falls short of Pixar top tier

Photo courtesy of Pixar

Elio (Yonas Kibreab) and Glordon (Remy Edgerly) in Elio.

Pixar has done a ton of different things in the 28 feature films they’ve released over the past 30 years, but the one they’d never done is deal with aliens (and, no, the alien toys in Toy Story don’t count). Now they’re going where many storytellers have gone before, but in their own unique way, in the new film Elio.

Elio (voiced by Yonas Kibreab) is a space fanatic who has recently lost both of his parents in an unnamed event. His Aunt Olga (Zoe Saldaña) is now his guardian, and because she happens to be a member of the U.S. Space Force, Elio finds himself tantalizingly close to communications from space. With a desire to be abducted by aliens for both curiosity and sentimental reasons, Elio sends a message into space, hoping for some kind of response.

He gets that and more when a ship full of multiple types of beings takes him into space, believing him to be a leader instead of a child. An encounter with a hostile force led by Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett) gives Elio both a new friend, Grigon’s son Glordon (Remy Edgerly), and responsibility for maintaining peace during an unexpected galactic crisis.

Pixar has not typically followed the route of many Disney movies of giving their child protagonist the trauma of dead parents, and doing so here is the first of a few minor missteps. Having Olga be his mom instead of his aunt would have altered their dynamic, but only slightly. While Elio is shown to miss his parents, his major focus is on making contact with aliens. Since the film only briefly deals with his grief, it would have been better served by excising it altogether.

For the most part, the film is goofy, with Elio’s enthusiasm for aliens matched by the oddness of the creatures he meets in space. The filmmakers - there are three credited directors and three credited writers - seem to have taken inspiration from sea creatures and Pixar’s own history, as the main bad guy emulates Mike and Sully’s boss from Monsters, Inc. Almost every character in the film is heightened to a degree that makes for funny situations, but not as much sentimentality as other Pixar offerings.

Surprisingly, especially since the film ends with a voiceover from notable astronomer Carl Sagan, the filmmakers play fast and loose with real-life science. Elio’s journeys to and from the alien spaceship are treated as close-to-instantaneous trips, even involving portals directly to Earth. The idea of the story doesn’t allow them to delve into things like relativistic time dilation, but there still could have been other scientific references to keep the story aboveboard.

There are very few stars to be found among the film’s voice cast other than Saldaña and Garrett, who are each fine if unmemorable. Kibreab and Edgerly are given many more scenes than anyone else, and they each do a great job of bringing out both the joy and naivete of their characters. Some lesser-known actors like Jameela Jamil, Atsuko Okatsuka, and Brendan Hunt show up in minor roles, but they don’t stand out in any way.

The story and characters in Elio are sweet and fun, but the film as a whole falls well short of the top tier Pixar movies. The filmmakers could have gone many different directions with a story about a boy who wants to be abducted by aliens, and the way they chose ended up being innocuous and less than compelling.

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Elio opens in theaters on June 20.

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