Tthere is something mean down in the woods againjust months after a deranged killer, a couple of deranged fairies, and a deranged attempt to resurrect IP reminded us once again to stay away. In Alexandre Aja’s entertaining but overly derivative new horror film Never Let Go, Halle Berry is a mother trying to protect her twin sons in a post-apocalyptic hellscape, hidden from what’s left of the rest of the world. There are exhausting rules, told in an exhausting way, and the most important of these is to never leave their remote cabin without a rope, and to maintain a connection with the sanctity of home at all times. If they find themselves untethered, they are at the mercy of a vicious and resourceful evil that will consume them.

But it’s an evil only she can recognize, and she tells the boys they won’t realize it until they’re older. This reservation breeds suspicion in Nolan (Percy Daggs IV, a superb newcomer), the less loyal of the two, who faces opposition from his brother Samuel (Anthony B Jenkins). As food runs short (a dinner of fried chunks of bark is an undeniable low point) and tensions rise, the strained family dynamic is tested.

It’s easy to get distracted while watching All We Had to Give, and the instinct to list the many films it brings to mind becomes increasingly difficult to suppress. There are bits of Bird Box, 10 Cloverfield Lane, The Babadook, The Village, Goodnight Mommy, Retreat, and A Quiet Place, to name a few, and the film fits both the current trend of pandemic-era isolation thrillers and the subgenre of horror films that are blatantly allegorical. It’s a film about a mother trying to keep her sons from leaving the house, protecting them from the monsters that exist outside, but simultaneously putting them at risk of being hurt by those who also live inside. It may be about a number of things – the curse of inherited mental illness, the suffocation of helicopter parenting, the fear of releasing black sons into a brutal, racist world – a stew of simmering ideas that makes us believe this isn’t just a superficial rehash.

When the film vacillates between guesswork and knowledge, it’s genuinely delightful. Once the ugliness of the scenery wears off, there’s genuine tension in trying to figure out where the real danger is coming from, watching kids being forced into adult thinking. Aja, whose Hollywood films have been more failures (Mirrors, Horns, The Hills Have Eyes, The 9th Life of Louis Drax) than successes (Crawl, Piranha), leans toward an efficiently nightmarish nastiness, showing us early on that the monsters plaguing Berry find devious ways to haunt her. She sees a grotesque version of her dead mother, or a vision of her dead sons, or a giant circling snake, and a nervous Berry is fierce and convincing as a mother trying to balance her personal fear with her need to stay strong in front of her children.

A climactic scene involving the family dog ​​provides some real tension that will keep you glued to your seat, but it also marks the point where the film starts to fall apart. This is followed by a big gasp-inducing shock that unfortunately sucks the air out of the final act, leaving a chaotic finale of cascading puzzle pieces that don’t fit into place. What had felt intriguing becomes utterly confusing, and you start to mourn Shyamalan’s heyday, when he could create a genre ending that was earned and explained enough to win us over.

Aja fails to balance the film’s starkly serious atmosphere – superfluous gothic chapter headings, a dark and sordid worldview, down-to-earth scenes of abuse – with the sillier and slimier monster elements. He’s never quite sure whether he wants to hook us with a shock moment or make us think about weightier issues, and because he can’t do either efficiently, the film gets lost in the darkness in between. Berry is a strong anchor as always, but by the time the credits roll, we’re ready to let go.