Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for Never Let Go
WhileNever Let Godid feature a few nasty surprises, the horror movie steered clear of one twist that no viewer wanted to see. Even the darkest horror movies rarely cross certain cultural taboos. It is unusual for slasher villains to kill children, for instance, since this is too gratuitously nasty for audiences who want to guiltily cheer the masked murderer. AlthoughNever Let Go’s twist endingwas bleak, the movie’s story did manage to avoid this issue by sidestepping a particularly grim twist. Director Alexandre Aja’s psychological horror skirted close to a major taboo but backed down.
Does Never Let Go Have A Post-Credits Scene?
Alexandre Aja’s recently-released supernatural thriller features anxiety-inducing questions throughout, but does anything happen after the credits?
Never Let Gofollows Halle Berry’s unnamed mother, a survivalist eking out a grim, deprived existence in an isolated woodland with her two sons. According to her, the world was destroyed by an ambiguous evil that she could see, but her sons cannot. Now, the family will survive only by remaining tethered to their remote home. One of the mother’s sons, Nolan, begins to question this version of events, while the other, Samuel, remains adamant that their mother can be trusted.Never Let Go’s largely unseen Evilis complicated, and its presence almost crosses a major horror genre taboo.
Never Let Go Backed Out Of Killing The Dog
Never Let Go Killed Off The Mother Before Its Animal Hero
Midway through the movie’s story,Never Let Go’s heroes begin to run out of food. Reduced to eating the bark from trees, the family is forced to contend with an unthinkable option. The mother explains that they will need to kill and eat the family dog to survive, something Nolan refuses to accept. Nolan locks his mother in their shed in the hopes that she will come to her senses, stopping her from killing the dog in the process.Never Let Go’s big twistthen reveals the mother really has been hallucinating the Evil, leading her to take her own life.
Pet death is a controversial twist in horror movies.
Never Let Godoesn’t go through with killing the family dog,despite how close the movie comes to breaking this unwritten horror taboo. While plenty of horror movies have killed off man’s best friends, it is not a coincidence that one of the most popular indexes for pop culture trigger warnings is a site calledDoes the Dog Die. Pet death is a controversial twist in horror movies, and plenty of classic horrors have cut scenes that broke this taboo for fear of alienating audiences. The original script forGremlinskilled the family dog before screenwriter Chris Columbus thought better.
Never Let Go Killing The Dog Wouldn’t Have Even Been The Worst Part
Never Let Go’s Grim Plans For The Family Pet Only Got Nastier
The real reason thatNever Let Godidn’t go through with the dog’s death is what would have come afterward, as this would have made the movie a far darker affair than it already was. Aja’s psychological horror operates as a sort of dark modern fairy tale wherein the Evil, whether imagined or not, exerts a supernatural power over this family. For most of its runtime, the movie is a blend of survival horror and strange, offbeat fantasy, but the reality of the family’s plans for their dog would have made it un-watchably grim.
The mother planned to butcher and eat the family dog after killing it, since this was the only source of food she could find for her sons. WhileNever Let Go’s Polaroid is creepy, nothing in the movie could be called outright disturbing or realistically horrific thanks to its odd, fantasy-tinged tone. Depicting the family killing and eating the dog would have changed that tone completely, makingNever Let Gofeel more akin to a relentlessly downbeat horror drama like 2024’sThe Devil’s Bathor 2017’sHagazussa: A Heathen’s Curse.
Killing The Dog In Never Let Go Would’ve Hurt The Movie
This Death Wasn’t Right For Never Let Go’s Tone
Broadly speaking,killing dogs is a twist that few movies can pull off successfully. The few examples of this shocking moment working well are usually outrageously dark comedies, like the absurdly tastelessThe Toxic Avenger, or classics where the scene in question is brief, likeHalloween’s revelation that Michael Myers killed a dog after escaping an asylum. For many more horrors, what is supposed to be a shocking twist ends up feeling gratuitously unpleasant and leaves viewers dispirited and disengaged.
There are a lot of movies wherein the death of a family dog serves little purpose beyond signposting that the movie is determined to leave viewers miserable.
FromThe Butterfly EffecttoHollow Man, too many horror movies use the death of a dog as a cheap shock tactic to upset viewers. For every exception to the rule, like 2023’s campyM3GAN, there are a lot of movies likeFunny Games(both the original and the remake) wherein the death of a family dog serves little purpose beyond signposting that the movie is determined to leave viewers miserable. The twist is both predictable and less effective as a result, meaningNever Let Gowas right to cleverly sidestep this tired reveal.
