The Never Let Go Ending Explained: What Actually Happens in Halle Berry’s New Horror Film?

This article is part of IGN’s Fantastic Fest coverage and contains detailed spoilers for the opening film Never Let Go, starring Halle Berry and directed by Alexandre Aja.

Are you wondering if Never let go has a post-credits scene? We’ll tell you right now: It has no mid- or post-credits scene of any kind. Again, spoilers follow…

A common misconception when explaining endings… — the term was never meant to be used in the plural — is that they’re definitive, when in reality it’s just another critic giving you another opinion in a format that doesn’t happen to be a review. I say that because a lot of films don’t have a clear ending that means the same thing to everyone who sees it. Alexandre Aja’s latest film, Never Let Go, falls so much into that camp that Halle Berry (the film’s star) introduced it at Fantastic Fest with the remark “decide for yourself what it means.” And, anecdotally speaking, everyone I spoke to after the screening had a completely different opinion of what the film’s ending actually means.

With that huge grain of salt in mind, let’s take a look!

Never Let Go: What’s the Evil?

A big part of what makes Never Let Go successful is that you believe Mama (Berry) is completely off the wall, until you realize she’s not. Except she is. Or maybe she isn’t? Let me explain.

Mama lives alone in a cabin in the middle of nowhere with her two sons, Samuel (Anthony B. Jenkins) and Nolan (Percy Daggs IV). The family must remain in their home at all times unless they tie a rope securely to the cabin’s foundation. You see, when Evil began taking over the world, her father built the house for her mother and gave her the ropes so she could roam the woods. We won’t get into the logistical issues here — those are addressed in the film — but what you do need to know is that Evil always has a sort of serpentine quality to it, no matter what form it takes, and none of Mama’s boys can see these creatures. Only Mama claims she can.

Now the biblical implications here are clear from the beginning, as is the warning of what can happen when someone holds on too tightly to their beliefs without asking healthy questions. We know that Mama murdered her husband, her mother. And her father when Evil touched them; we know Mama had a dark past and was “saved” by relying on the cliché of “born again” Christians who became unwaveringly pious; and we know Nolan is starting to have questions about the rest of the world.

These questions, and Mama’s decision to kill the family dog ​​so they don’t starve (he’s actually okay, don’t worry) result in Nolan cutting Mama’s rope, exposing her to Evil. (Note: Nolan doesn’t believe in Evil at this point and is trying to show Mama that they could continue on in search of food if she would just believe him.) Rather than be touched by Evil and thus, she believes, forced to kill her sons with her own hands, she chooses to slit her own throat.

Never Let Go Ending Explained

After Mama’s death—which occurs about halfway through the film, leaving young Jenkins and Daggs IV to single-handedly carry the film to a remarkable success—things take a turn for the worse. And know that’s saying something, because this family is literally starving. There’s a glimmer of hope when Nolan runs as far away and screams as loud as he can while remaining tied up in a last-ditch effort to save his brother, who’s starving to death faster than he is.

The boys get their first real glimpse of the outside world when a walker follows Nolan to the house after hearing his cry. But while Nolan sees the walker as their savior, Samuel immediately believes he has begun seeing demons, just like his mother. The two argue, Samuel shoots the man in the stomach, and Nolan eventually steals his backpack to get the food he knows the man has.

At this point, Never Let Go shifts gears. Nolan lavishes the food on him, savoring it so he can share it with his brother. Samuel initially refuses, but later wolfs down the food while Nolan sleeps. You’re left wondering at this point whether the can of ravioli and the other food items are the proverbial forbidden apple, and whether Nolan and Sam—who have had a strong Cain and Abel vibe from the start—have simply succumbed to the temptation of Evil.

But they didn’t. Life-saving food is just life-saving food, and the hiker was killed for nothing.

Later, the hiker’s daughter shows up, signaling the beginning of the end. Samuel, now apparently thinking clearly because he has food in his belly, chases after the hiker’s daughter as he apologizes for killing her father. She runs past the end of the rope, Samuel believes she is real and breaks free, but then she creepily-crawls up a tree and startles him from behind, spitting a centipede at him that disappears down his throat. Evil was real.

Except it wasn’t. But it was. (I swear I have a point.)

Now touched by Evil, Samuel returns to their home and sets it on fire, trapping Nolan in his mother’s room. He later takes a selfie with his mother’s old Polaroid of the burning cabin in the background as his brother—he believes—burns alive. Nolan, however, hides in the cabin’s crawl space after confronting Evil posing as his mother. Instead of choosing hatred or fear, Nolan embraces Mama-Evil, who then transforms into regular Evil (a sort of serpentine humanoid) and embraces him in return. Both boys survive the fire and are helicoptered out of the woods, with the family dog ​​running along behind the chopper safe and sound.

So! What does it all mean? Was Mama crazy? Was she not crazy? Is Evil real or fake? The answer to all of this is “yes.”

First, Berry noted in the Q&A after the screening that it’s up to you to decide whether “the Evil is generated by her because she’s schizophrenic” or whether she’s just the way she is because “motherhood is maddening.” Given that her mother saw the same things she did, and schizophrenia runs in families, it seems pretty likely that Mama (and Grand Mama) needed psychiatric help that they didn’t get. As for the Evil, and the boys who ultimately saw it, it comes down to a few things – all of which were important to my enjoyment of the film.

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