Never Let Go’s Polaroid Picture & What It Means For Sam

Warning: major spoilers for Never Let Go aheadAlexandre Aja’s new supernatural horror movie Never Let Go ends with a dark and potentially confusing finale, with the ambiguity surrounding Sam and his Polaroid acting as a mind-melting closing scene. The ending of Never Let Go casts doubt on all the events covered in the tale of isolation and fear, and does virtually nothing to explain the true nature of The Evil that stalks Halle Berry’s Momma and her two young sons. With no exposition or clarification provided, it’s left to the audience to parse out the movie’s final scenes.

Sam and Nolan’s isolation comes to a fiery end at the end of Never Let Go, and while it’s assumed The Evil is behind all the death and suffering, it’s technically Sam who is responsible for setting their home on fire. As the house burns to the ground with his brother inside it, Sam takes a selfie with the inferno using Momma’s Polaroid camera. It’s implied that Sam had been possessed by The Evil, and director Alexandre Aja provided a surprisingly certain answer to whether that was the case. However, the reveal of Sam’s Polaroid selfie casts doubt on everything.

Never Let Go’s Polaroid Picture Shows The Evil Touching Sam

It Provides A Brief Glimpse At The Evil’s True Form

The Polaroid is revealed in the final scenes of Never Let Go, and it shows Nolan’s selfie with the house, but with one significant addition: the hand of the humanoid snake creature manifestation of The Evil is on his shoulder. While The Evil presents itself in different forms throughout the movie, it’s implied that the snake creature is its true form. It appears as people from Momma’s past when she sees it, and eventually as a multi-limbed monster when it finally possesses Sam.

Momma mentions in passing that photographs show things as they truly are while explaining the camera to her boys, which ultimately points to the Polaroid with the snake creature’s hand on Sam’s shoulder as the ultimate evidence that The Evil is in fact a real supernatural entity, and not a hallucination born of Momma’s traumatic past. That represents a major pivot from the movie’s general setup up to that point, which points to The Evil not actually being real, but rather a symptom of the characters’ starved bodies and strained minds.

Is The Picture Of The Evil Touching Sam Real?

Different Moments Cast Doubt On Everything

Unfortunately, the Polaroid doesn’t actually provide any clarification of whether The Evil is actually real or not. Throughout Never Let Go, director Alexandre Aja strings together terrifying images of The Evil alongside evidence that it might all be in Momma’s head. The fact the boys couldn’t see The Evil makes it seem like their belief is a product of the power of suggestion, and partially due to the isolation and trauma that Momma has inflicted on them. Sam’s Polaroid with the snake creature’s hand in it contradicts everything before it, and implies The Evil might be a real evil entity.

The problem with Sam’s Polaroid is that all three characters have been clearly established as unreliable narrators by the time the Polaroid is revealed. Momma seemingly has decades of deep-seated trauma contributing to her lack of mental stability, so she’s unreliable from the very beginning. Both boys become unreliable in their weakened physical and mental state, which is a result of the severe malnutrition they’re suffering from. It becomes impossible to tell if the Polaroid the audience sees is real, or if that’s Sam’s interpretation of the picture he took.

Never Let Go’s Director Explained The Meaning Of Sam’s Picture

Alexandre Aja Provided A Direct Answer

Never Let Go’s director Alexandre Aja has provided a significant amount of clarity about the events depicted in the movie in the days leading up and the days after the film’s release. He spoke directly about Sam’s Polaroid and the twins’ fate in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, clarifying the true nature of The Evil as a metaphor and providing his own perspective on the hand of The Evil on Sam’s shoulder in the movie’s ending.

For me, the movie is a fairytale. It is a story told through images, and every image has an involvement. But for me, the presence of that evil hand on his shoulder is just to say he is f—ed up. He will never get rid of that trauma, like his brother, by embracing the darkness of his mom. In the end, one is going to be safe. The other one will never manage to get free and will always be on that rope.

Never Let Go explores several different themes during its runtime, but none is more prevalent than the persistence of trauma. The Evil, in the form of the humanoid snake-like creature, physically touches both boys in the movie’s final few scenes, symbolizing how significantly their life of isolation and fear has damaged them. Sam’s Polaroid with The Evil’s hand on his shoulder is proof that the trauma will stick with him long after the two boys are rescued, while his brother may be able to break free of it having directly confronted The Evil in the form of Momma.

Source: Entertainment Weekly