halle berry alexander aja horror movie

‘Splat Pack’ veteran Alexandre Aja tries to make a horror film in the style of ‘Family Crisis’ quiet place franchise never let go. But most of all, the French director succeeds in making us nostalgic for his shift from funny trash to B-movie sleaze, with creature features centered around greedy biting carnivorous fish (Piranha 3D) or a giant Florida alligator angered by hurricanes and floods (crawl). Whatever their strengths and weaknesses, these movies are fun popcorn entertainment. Aja’s latest has lost its fun, it started off as mildly entertaining, writing some exhilarating jump scares before running out of energy.

KC Coughlin and Ryan Grassby’s script is weak, and part of the problem is the cumbersome setting. Halle Berry stars as a woman, initially identified only as a mother, with her prepubescent fraternal twin sons Samuel (Anthony B. Jenkins) and Nolan (Percy Daggs IV) Live in an old wooden house in the woodlands. Whenever they go out of the house in search of food, they must be tied to the foundation of the house with a thick rope and: no way. let. go. Mom explains that this way evil can’t reach them and make them do bad things, and a lot of times you want to scream, “Jesus, we get it!”

This invisible evil has apparently poisoned humanity to the point where civilization has ended, and only the warmth and love of the house the boys’ grandfather built for his horrible wife can keep them safe. We get some of this setup from Nolan in voiceover, and then more from Mom in the ominous dinner story and warning, both patiently nurturing and furious. They would even recite a rhyming incantation before venturing out, and when they returned inside and their hands touched the sacred wood, they would recite another rhyming incantation. The premise is filled with a lot of convoluted knowledge that somehow never makes it more coherent.

Evil comes in many forms, from snakes slithering around the mossy roots of the forest to zombie humans lurking waiting for one of them to escape. The mother told them that these demons wanted to destroy the love in the boys’ hearts. It can get into their heads and divide them, driving them to kill each other.

The villainous representation of Mom’s particular interest is a housecoat-clad redneck (played by Katherine Kirkpatrick) who bleeds with ink and has a tongue like a lizard—or something like Gene Simmons in his “Kiss” heyday. It was suspected early on that she had once been a member of the family. At night, while Mom sits in a rocking chair on the porch, sharpening a hunting knife, the boys’ late father (William Catlett), who appears to be alive except for the giant shotgun hole in his back, hangs around the house.

The boys’ recklessness leads to a close call, and the mother is so enraged that she threatens them with a knife while making them repeat the rhyme for the 800th time. She also has a purification ritual where she locks one of them in a cellar at a time, imagining darkness taking over their world, and then returning herself to the light.

The movie was already starting to fall apart by this point due to the ambiguity and repetitive nature of the plot, so it’s a welcome shot of madness when Berry threatens to go full-on Piper Laurie. Carrie. Sadly, instead of being hell-fire hysterical (at least for now), she maintains a low level of witchcraft intensity and a fear that takes over Mom’s every waking moment. Still, a seed is planted, suggesting that her maternal devotion might be more twisted than it seems.

The harsh winter has killed everything edible in the greenhouse, as well as much of the natural vegetation worth foraging, and woodland animals have been slow to return, increasing the family’s risk of starvation. A skinny squirrel was skinned and fried by its mother, which seemed to be the last sumptuous meal they tasted before they could only eat fried bark.

Hunger, fear, and desperation drive a rift between the brothers as Nolan begins to doubt his mother’s dire warnings and plots to set out without ropes in search of food. Since Mom was the only one who had ever seen evil, they always had to take her word for it. But Samuel trusts her without question, begging Nolan not to put them all in danger.

In his final film, this claustrophobic Netflix sci-fi survival thriller oxygenIn “Aja”, Aja adopts an extremely limited setting to keep the plot tense and suspenseful. He is working on a larger canvas never let goa three-character Southern Gothic chamber music piece. But once we digest all of Mom’s teachings, the movie starts to slow down.

The friction between the brothers is well played by two excellent young actors – Jenkins has recently taken on more than his fair share of villainy, after Lee Daniels’ unintentionally over-the-top possession. save – The makeup team did a fantastic job on all three members of the main cast, who had hollowed-out eyes and cheeks due to malnutrition taking its toll. But the film can only draw so much inspiration from “Is mom crazy or is she telling the truth?” Before it gets monotonous.

A shocking development about halfway through the story significantly raises the stakes, and a passing hiker (Matthew Kevin Anderson) reinforces Nolan’s conviction that normal life goes on there. , beyond the woodland borders of a dark fairy tale world. By then, however, the movie had become an inevitable “and then there was one” countdown. Although Aja peppers the final performance with plenty of intense action, shifting perspectives, demonic visitations, and a touch of body horror, it’s dull, silly, and not scary.

At the technological level, never let go It’s polished. Aja’s long-time cinematographer Maxime Alexander uses wide framing to place the characters in a moody natural setting filled with mystery and menace. The forest scenes (filmed outside of Vancouver, representing rural Tennessee) are lush and atmospheric. Its basic noises and mostly unseen animal sounds are effectively blended with an intensely eerie soundtrack by French indie-pop artist Robin Coudert, who serves as ROB Film recording and composition.

Production designer Jeremy Stanbridge created the house as a unique entity, filled with secrets and lit only by candles and oil lamps. As a treat on a new moon night, Mom would wind up an old gramophone and let the boys sing and dance to the late 1920s country ballad “Big Rock Candy Mountain,” a sign of the place’s rich history.

Berry, who is also a producer at HalleHolly, went all out. Charismatic to an almost feral degree, with a Southern accent here and there, she deftly blurs the line between intensely protective and paranoid and unhinged most of the time. But all her convictions fail to inject substance into a story far more complex than that and a film far more serious than its material merits.