Halle Berry Was the Key to Alexandre Aja’s New Fairy Tale Horror

Horror filmmaker Alexandre Aja made an infamous name for himself at midnight festival screenings of High Tension, his praised entry into the slasher genre. Since then, Aja has been a wildly prolific director and producer with cult favorites The Hills Have Eyes, Horns, Piranha 3D, and Crawl. Now, he’s dipping his toes into the Gothic tradition with his new psychological (or perhaps supernatural) survival horror film, Never Let Go, starring Halle Berry.

Never Let Go tells the story of a mother (Berry) and her twin sons, played by big-screen newcomers Percy Daggs IV and Anthony B. Jenkins, suffering from the torment of a malicious spirit for many years. However, when one of the boys begins to doubt the existence of this evil, the family falls into turmoil, leading to a dangerous fight for survival.

In this interview, Collider’s Steve Weintraub talks with Aja about including the subtle inspiration of Edgar Allan Poe, making sure your script is a complete story before shooting, and dreams of a high-concept giant-spider apocalypse blockbuster. You can watch the full conversation in the video above or read the transcript below.

Alexandre Aja Dreamed of Making A Live-Action Anime

“Kind of like Guardians of the Galaxy before Guardians of the Galaxy.”

COLLIDER: You’ve directed a lot of things. Which of your previous projects changed the most in the editing room in ways you didn’t expect going in?

ALEXANDRE AJA: The process is always kind of wild because on every movie, there is this moment where you’re testing and then you go with the audience, and then you try crazy things quickly out of the box, and you start putting the movie all back. But most of the time, then you end up going back to the way it was. In Never Let Go, I even went back even further when we were editing, like back to the script, back to that original spec script that the writers, KC [Coughlin] and Ryan [Grassby], wrote in the first place that I never had in my hand because the movie was developed on its own. So, it was elements.

To answer your question, I feel that my first feature, Furia, was the one that was completely different. We wrote a full movie that was built in flashbacks. At the time, it was a very small movie, and halfway [through], we realized that it didn’t work. We decided to put the movie in order, and I never had the chance to see the movie the way it was written, that I wrote. So, I would say that the first one was the one that kind of got me, and maybe taught me a lesson to be sure that when you have your script, it is a movie already.

If you could get the financing to make anything you want, is there a script sitting in the box or a story that you’re like, “Oh my god, I wish I could get the financing for this?”

AJA: Can I have a few for the same big budget? [Laughs] I do have a pile of scripts that I fell in love with at some point that I developed, that I wrote for a long time, that I keep because I always think that maybe one day we will make it happen. There is this dream project based on a Japanese anime and manga called Cobra, the Space Pirate that we tried to do for a very long time. It was very expensive. That was kind of like Guardians of the Galaxy before Guardians of the Galaxy. I guess that would be the one. I love creature movies, and I’ll also dream about a giant spider apocalypse thing. That would be good.

‘Never Let Go’ Is Alexandre Aja’s Dark Fairy Tale

“There is a tradition in Gothic literature, like Edgar Allan Poe, where it could be supernatural.”

Jumping into why I get to talk to you. What was it about this material that said, “I need to make this?”

AJA: That “I need to make this” is so important. It is really the reason because then, when you’re really struggling to make this movie and trying to put everything together, you need to remember that moment where you said, “Oh, I fell in love with that story.” I remember reading K.C. and Ryan’s script the first time, and what I really loved was the voice, their tone, the way they wrote the script, the way they wrote the dialogue, the way they managed to create a real fairy tale that goes beyond entertainment, the way fairy tales used to be back in the day, like a psychological tool to understand who we are. I think it’s all the layers about them, what it is to be a child looking up at your parents and trusting your parents — or not — or the opposite of being a parent and not overprotecting. That type of more psychological fear that was staying with you at the end of the read of the script, that was really what got me, like, “Oh, I have to do this one.”

One of the things about this film is you need to decide where and when, like in any movie, you’re gonna give the audience information. How was it figuring that out, like, “When do I want to put the audience on this path?”

AJA: It was a tricky journey because we had a lot of material. I remember in the first cut, we had as little information as possible and we tried it just to see what the audience would get from it, and they didn’t get much. [Laughs] So, we started bringing back everything that we shot to kind of build up the story. But I wanted to be sure that we were just giving enough and not too much. I wanted to be sure that the movie was the version I wanted it to be, which happened to also be what Halle wanted it to be, but also have in itself more interpretation that people could see. Talking about the movie with people who have seen it, I’m really excited every time to see that they read a different version. There are multiple versions.

There is a tradition in Gothic literature, like Edgar Allan Poe, where it could be supernatural, it could not — it could be real. There is something about the ambivalence of both options being possible that I love and that I wanted to carry for Never Let Go.

I’m very curious what audiences are going to think about it because there are a lot of ways to look at this.

Halle Berry “Was Key” to Working With Kids in ‘Never Let Go’

One of the things about this is two of your leads are children, and the thing about children is you have very limited working hours. What was it actually like making this when you had six hours?

AJA: It’s tough because you have like limited hours. They also have school during those hours. It’s very, very difficult, so you need to be ready. It was a long walk in prep. First, to be lucky to have amazing actors, to really find the right person, that’s like 50% of your work is to find the right one in the casting. Then, it was really to get ready to be sure that they understood everything. We had a secret weapon on set. Andrew McIlroy was the acting coach who was really just in charge of the two boys, and he was there in between takes to keep the energy, keep where we are in the story, because we had limited time, limited takes, and it’s always kind of under pressure. There are some scenes that we pulled in 15 minutes that are spectacular because there’s something real and natural when they live the story. And I have to also say that Halle was absolutely key to the process of getting them in the right place.

Never Let Go is in theaters now.

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