101 min | R | September 20, 2024 | Lionsgate
Halle Berry lives in a cabin with her twin sons, tethered by ropes to keep an unseen evil at bay. The atmosphere is suffocating. The answers are not worth the wait.
Momma and her twin sons Nolan and Samuel live in an isolated cabin in the woods. An entity called the Evil has consumed the world. The family survives by staying connected to their house with ropes whenever they venture outside. If the rope breaks, the Evil takes you. Momma believes this absolutely. One of the boys begins to doubt. The film constructs its horror around the question of whether Momma is protecting her children or imprisoning them. The ambiguity is the film’s strength for two acts and its weakness in the third.
Halle Berry plays Momma with fierce maternal intensity. She is starving and exhausted and convinced that releasing the rope means death. Berry commits to the physicality of survival. She eats bugs. She fights the elements. She holds her children with a grip that could be love or control. Percy Daggs IV and Anthony B. Jenkins play the twins with distinct personalities. One trusts Momma. One questions her. The divergence between them creates the film’s central tension.
Alexandre Aja directed High Tension and The Hills Have Eyes. He knows how to create atmosphere and he builds it expertly here. The cabin is decaying. The forest is dark and hostile. The ropes are ever-present. The sound design makes every creak and snap feel threatening. The Evil manifests as hallucinations that may or may not be real. Aja keeps the audience guessing alongside the doubting twin. The visual effects work is restrained and effective when used sparingly.
The film collapses in the third act when it must answer its own question. The resolution is unsatisfying not because of what it reveals but because of how it reveals it. The ambiguity that powered the first two acts gives way to genre mechanics that feel conventional after the unconventional setup. Berry deserves credit for anchoring the film with a physical performance that never falters. The film around her falters instead.