Few actresses have had as eclectic a career as Academy Award-winner Halle Berry, but while she has dabbled in genre-adjacent films like Perfect Stranger, Dark Tide and The Call, she hasn’t starred in a straightforward horror film since Gothika, a film released more than 20 years ago. That changes this year, with the release of Alexandre Aja‘s Never Let Go, in theaters on Friday.
In the film, Berry plays June, “known simply as Momma to her fraternal twin sons, Samuel (Anthony B. Jenkins) and Nolan (Percy Daggs IV). After an entity she calls ‘the Evil’ took over the world, Momma has kept her family safe for the past ten years by confining them to the cabin where she herself grew up. They forage and hunt in the surrounding woods, making sure to ‘never let go’ of the ropes tied to the foundation of their increasingly-dilapidated home, which they believe is the only place in the world safe from ‘the Evil.’ But as food runs low, the boys begin to wonder whether ‘the Evil’ is even real — or if Momma’s just really, really sick. With the ties that bind them severed, a terrifying fight for survival ensues.”
For her role, Berry has the challenging task of doling out some tough love to Jenkins and Daggs’ characters, something that increases in intensity as the film goes on. To prepare for these scenes, Berry drew on her own experiences as a mother.
She explains, “Most parents have had dole out some tough love to their kids at some time in their life, you know what I mean? If you really love your children sometimes you’re tough, but there’s a fine line between mental and physical abuse. And my character, to her credit, she’s a different kind of mom trying to raise boys in a very unique circumstance, and it’s that tough love that’s keeping them alive. That’s how I always looked at her.”
Halle Berry as Momma in Never Let Go. Credit: Liane Hentscher/ Courtesy of Lionsgate
“She’s walking a line of toughness but what’s the opposite of that? Well, they perish,” Berry continues. “And I think if they were truly harmed, that’s unthinkable for her. So that’s where the toughness comes from. It really generates from a place of love. And that’s what I connected to when I had to play those tough moments, or those harsh moments. Deep down it was her sense of love for these boys that made her desperately want to protect them. And protect them from some of the hardships of what she’s had to deal with in her life. Like in the old world before we’re dropped into this movie. She knows better than anyone what that tough world out there can do to you.”
While Berry is a horror fan, it wasn’t just the horror aspect that drew her to the project. “It’s my first film with my producing partner Holly Jenkins under our HalleHolly banner,” Berry explains, “and this is one of my favorite genres of movies, but this one felt different for me. There are some things that feel familiar, but you’ve never seen a Black mama with her two Black sons in the middle of the woods tied to a rope to a house, you know?
“And the generational trauma of it all! The spiritual and religious aspects of it. All of that made it new for me and something interesting in the space so that’s what made me want to dip my toe back in to the genre.”
Realizing that Never Let Go is her first horror film in two decades, Berry doesn’t know why she hasn’t sought out more genre films. “I don’t know!” she says, “because those are films I really do love to watch! I’m a really big psychological thriller and horror film fan. So I don’t know! Maybe I’ll do more.“
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