For screenwriters KC Coughlin and Ryan Grassby, when starting a project they say: “It always starts with a ‘what if’. With Never Let Go, it was simply ‘what if there’s a family confined within their home because of an evil force outside that’s after them, but the force is unable to breach the safety of their walls’?”
Never Let Go is the latest film from visionary horror director Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes, Crawl) and the producers of Stranger Things.
It began as a spec script written by KC Coughlin & Ryan Grassby “Most of what we had written before were thrillers, and this was our first true foray into horror,” says Coughlin and Grassby. “When we finished the script (right at the beginning of COVID) when suddenly, and coincidentally, we were all stuck inside our homes) we knew we had something special. But we never could have imagined what this would become.”
“They’re great writers,” Dan Cohen, a producer on the film and at 21 Laps, says; he’d read their work and met with them after reading their eighty-page script in the spring of 2020. Cohen was drawn not only to the script’s quality and economical length but specifically to how Coughlin and Grassby “write like editors.” “When they decide to cut in or out of scenes,” Cohen explains, “they find [ways] to… elicit fear or intrigue in a way that I don’t think [even] a lot of other great writers do.”
Producer Shawn Levy and founder of 21 Laps says, “Beyond the great writing, we loved the terrifying nature of the ambiguity. Is The Evil real? Is Momma crazy? This story was written in such vivid detail and the family bond was very strong on the page. As the questions start to get answered and the horror sets in, it had a strong effect on us and made for an incredibly terrifying and gripping thrill-ride.”
“I remember reading and feeling a different type of fear than the usual fear I find in other scripts,” Alexandre Aja says of his experience reading the initial script. “But what got me right away falling in love with the project was that very singular and unique approach of the modern story through the code of the classic fairytale.”
Aja, whose distinguished and successful career as a horror director goes back two decades, felt like this would be “very different from everything I’ve done before.” The story portrayed a world “with a lot of symbols, a lot of symbolism everywhere… [and] a lot of layers… Layers of story. Layers of psychology. Layers of relationships. A lot like a great, dark, scary fairytale.” Like all fairytales, the fantastical setting reflects an all-too-real fear — in this case, “parenthood,” Aja says. “The relationship that you can have with your parents. What you need to leave behind to your kids. The trauma, the generational trauma that goes from you to your children.”
Cohen, who’d been wanting and trying to work with Aja for a while, “was thrilled to hear he responded to the script. I’ve always thought he’s such a visual filmmaker… and so I felt, ‘who better to bring this world to life?’” Then Berry called, and “I mean, it’s just an amazing call to get,” Cohen says. “This is a small, contained horror movie. Halle Berry had always loved the horror genre, but with this film, there was the added excitement of, in her words, “having a family like this be seen in a way that a Black family has
never been seen before.” With Berry on as a full creative partner, the story Never Let Go was well on its way to coming to life.”
“I think you’ll find different interpretations of the movie,” Aja says. “Already in the script that was the case. The studio, [Cohen and Jeter], myself, Halle — everyone kind of read something that was slightly different, the same themes but with a more personal approach.” Everyone who worked on the film was drawn in by this constant ambiguity, which only becomes more pronounced in the final act.”
“To have the producers of Arrival and “Stranger Things” sign on as the shepherds of this project, and find it a home at Lionsgate, then to get Alex Aja to direct and Halle Berry to bring Momma to life, has been a literal dream come true for us.” says Coughlin and Grassby.
The producers at 21 Laps emphasize their desire to tell genre stories that carry a strong dramatic core. Founder Levy says, “We always talk about – if the aliens never landed, if the monster never showed up, etc. – we need to really care about these people and want to spend time with them in a straight drama. Never Let Go has this in spades. It touches on so many potent things from the loss of innocence and generational trauma to things that feel incredibly timely in conjunction with what the world has gone through in the past few years. All while delivering on a really scary and unique mythology.”
Halle 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” takes over the world, Momma has kept her family safe for the past ten years by confining them to the cabin where she 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 increasinglydilapidated home, which they believe is the only place in the world safe from “The Evil.” But as food runs low, the boys began 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.
ALEXANDRE AJA – DIRECTOR, PRODUCER
Alexandre Jouan-Arcady (born August 7, 1978, in Paris, France), known professionally as Alexandre Aja, is a writer-director who has worked primarily in the horror genre, beginning with his acclaimed French-language breakthrough film High Tension (2003) before making the transition to American films with his remake of Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes (2006). He has gone on to direct other notable genre films such as Piranha 3D (2010), Horns (2013) and Crawl (2019). He is the son of French-Algerian filmmaker Alexandre Arcady
KC COUGHLIN & RYAN GRASSBY – WRITERS
KC Coughlin and Ryan Grassby are originally from Montreal, Canada, and burst on the scene with their 2016 Feature Mean Dreams. Since Mean Dreams, Coughlin and Grassby have continued to work in a variety of genres in both Features and Series. Their most recent feature, The King Tide is a Gothic Canadian drama and premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 2023. “Grassby is currently based in Montreal and Coughlin is based in Los Angeles.
