Film Review - Hallow Road

An agreeably stressful psychological horror-thriller from Babak Anvari, featuring the brilliant Rosamund Pike

Credit: Universal

If you’re a horror fan and haven’t seen Under the Shadow (2016), you need to correct that oversight immediately. Babak Anvari’s supernatural spine-freezer doubled as a feminist critique of fundamentalist Islam and knocked my socks off nine years ago. His latest, Hallow Road, is almost as good. Featuring superb central performances from Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys, it’s one of the finest (nearly) all-in-one-location dramas I’ve seen for some time; a must if grippingly stressful psychological thriller-horror experiences are your idea of a good time at the cinema.

I’m reticent to detail plot specifics, unlike the trailer, which once again gives away far too much. However, I will say it occurs largely within a moving vehicle, and features paramedic Maddie (Pike) and her husband Frank (Rhys). In the small hours of the morning, they are driving into a remote forest to rendezvous with their eighteen-year-old daughter Alice (Megan McDonnell), who has had some kind of dreadful accident. Earlier that evening, a row with her parents resulted in Alice storming out and driving away, and whilst Maddie and Frank close the distance between themselves and their daughter, the background details of this family gradually emerge.

As events unfold, things get increasingly intense in an every-parent’s-nightmare sort of way. Indeed, the premise of William Gillies’s excellent screenplay concerns just how far one would go for one’s children, with questions about whether bailing them out of bad situations or allowing them to take the consequences is best. But just when you think you have a handle on the way things are going to play out, the film deftly wrongfoots you with escalating crises and a hint of something supernatural. The forest into which Alice has driven has an eerie pagan history. Is something a bit more otherworldly going on?

Anvari and cinematographer Kit Fraser introduce this possibility amid the gnawing dread, subtly weaving it into the visual language of the film. Making exceptional use of the vehicular location, imaginative camera angles are expertly deployed as the suspense builds. In between tense exchanges, dark images of rural night landscapes and eerily illuminated branches exude nightmarish malevolence from every corner of the screen. The use of sound is also exceptional, as is Lorne Balfe’s foreboding score.

At times, the film recalls the single-location drama of Locke (2013) with added folkloric menace. But Hallow Road is absolutely its own beast. Although set in the UK, the film was shot in Prague and Ireland, making great use of real locations that allow our imaginations to run riot through what we don’t see. The terrific lead performances fully convince, to the point that, not for the first time, I want to start a Rosamund Pike appreciation society. She really is criminally underrated.

At a trim 80 minutes, the film has not one ounce of fat. It’s a lean, muscular, heart-clenching vice of creeping dread that holds the viewer in a merciless grip. Nerves are well and truly wracked. I daresay that statement will put off one set of viewers and turn on another. That’s exactly as it should be. Not everyone will be up for such a disturbing journey, but those who are will relish its cathartic cruelty.

For those among you who think this will work just as well on television, I’d caution against that kind of thinking. For one thing, the immersion of the big screen enhances the emotional claustrophobia. For another, the powerful impact of the dark passing nightscapes will be lost on television, especially those lacking adequate picture settings. Then there’s the shocks of the soundscape, which put you on edge from the word go (the film opens with a piercing malfunctioning smoke alarm). In short: If you can see Hallow Road at the cinema, do so.

One final suggestion: Don’t leap up once the end credits roll, as the cast list adds another intriguing layer of ambiguous thought-provocation. You’ll understand why when you read them.

(Originally published at Medium.)

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