Manifesting your dreams of becoming Hollywood stars as precocious prepubescents is one thing, as Anthony B. Jenkins and Percy Daggs IV have done in the heart-racing Never Let Go. However, that euphoric feeling of playing pivotal characters was amplified exponentially when Daggs and Jenkins starred in the supernatural thriller Never Let Go, opposite Oscar-winner and perpetual beauty Halle Berry.
Never Let Go centers around the few survivors of a “Great Evil” that triggered an apocalyptic obliteration of civilization. The trio [Berry, Jenkins and Daggs] have taken to isolation in a cabin in the middle of the woods. While out foraging for food for survival, the three remain tethered together, literally and figuratively, by a rope the mother [Berry] warns they must always hold onto.
When one of the sons questions the validity of his mother’s visions about the presence of a malevolent entity hovering in their midst and then disconnects from the rope, it triggers a horrifying fight for survival.
The rope and the praying chamber are major players and pivotal inanimate characters in this spine-tingling film that inches along and gives off a foreboding sense of impending doom, Daggs and Jenkins inform us.
“The rope is a big player,” Jenkins reveals. “… letting go of this rope outside of this house lets the evil get closer to you, and it can take you away and make you do bad things. We don’t know what bad things, but we know it’s going to be very bad.”
Daggs said the praying chamber, which wards off everpresent evil was “very important in the movie. It shows like letting go of everything, like letting go of all the bad that goes into you and it’s used in strange ways,” Daggs continues. “Like mama [Berry] uses it to make sure that the evil’s not there. And then, she also uses it to make sure that the evil comes in and goes out, which is, like, a lot.”
Jenkins previously appeared in The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey and Undone, and Jenkins starred in The Deliverance and multiple episodes of Florida Man.
Playing alongside global icon Berry was the pinnacle of Jenkins and Daggs’ young careers.
“Awesome. I had a great experience … and we made a beautiful film together,” Daggs exclaimed, while Jenkins testified that Berry told him he possesses that je ne sais quoi quality that makes him special:
“[Berry] said, ‘I booked you for this role because there’s this superpower that you have, and it’s your eyes and how you use it in front of the camera.’ And she also says, ‘Keep going; don’t stop.’ And like she’s such a kind and nice actress.”
Moviegoers, and especially horror film lovers who enjoy being cattle-prodded in a dark theater during the Halloween season, will have to find out what happens when the link gets cut, and one of the sons lets go of the rope.
Never Let Go is now playing in theaters nationwide.
