In Never Let Go, Halle Berry plays the mother to twin sons battling an evil spirit closing in on the family’s wilderness home after a world-ending event, as seen in the trailer for Lionsgate’s horror-thriller.
Hailing from The Hills Have Eyes (2006) and Crawl filmmaker Alexandre Aja, the film centres on a remote house in the woods, fitted with long ropes that enable mother and sons to remain connected in the face of unseen dangers. “The evil out there is clever. One touch without a rope is all it takes… that rope is your lifeline. Never let go.” Berry’s character explains in the trailer. But as a supernatural force engulfs their home, one of the twins begins to question whether this evil truly exists.
Speaking at CinemaCon (via THR), Berry states she took the role because she’s a “bona fide adrenaline junkie” who has always loved thriller movies. “These boys have never left the house that they were born in for 10 years,” Berry continued. “Right away, it was a creepy environment. I was challenged to bring reality to what that would be like. What does mothering look like in a house in the woods with no one around?”
For the role, she learned survival skills and said there was “a little bit of Method acting” going on. “There was no electricity, no lights, my character skinning squirrels, and they’re eating bugs and frogs — raw frogs — in the woods,” Berry said. “I had to really skin a squirrel. These things wildly challenged me to create some reality within this world that felt so foreign.” And she said she pulled from her own life as a mother of two to inform her performance: “Since I became a mother 16 years ago, playing these kinds of roles has wildly excited me. With this movie, it reminded me how I would protect my children with my life. We often say, ‘I would take a bullet for my kids.’ Would you take a knife for your kids?”
Never Let Go comes from the producers of Stranger Things and Arrival, and is being released by Lionsgate. Anthony B. Jenkins, Percy Daggs IV, Matthew Kevin Anderson, Christin Park and Stephanie Lavigne also star.
The horror-thriller is set for a theatrical release September 27th. Watch the trailer below:
