The Hollow

Right off the bat I'll tell you that this movie is also known by the name "The Burning Curse". This will help you try to avoid this movie under any title. The film follows a trio of sisters who are traveling to an island to visit their aunt who is going to help them get better medical treatment for one of the girls, who is traumatized from seeing the death of her parents. For some reason every one-hundred years on Halloween, this island is cursed to have three supposed witches return in the form of a flaming, viney, wooden, scarecrow thingy. It's really not scary, but it manages to look pretty cool on the limited fx. If you see a still photo of the creature one time, this will really be enough to satisfy your curiousity. You really owe it to yourself to keep the ninety minutes of your life that I wasted to warn you of this dud. Watch something else!

As soon as you're introduced to the protagonists of the film you want to slap them. After another two minutes I wanted to strangle them and we haven't even gotten to the meat of the film yet.

Now typically going into any creature feature you're not expecting much and when it's a cable show produced creature feature you're expecting even less. However it's never a good sign when you don't care at all about the main characters and you're waiting for characters to die.

They are beyond annoying and I didn't care what they went through, I was rooting for the demonic spirit creature to devour them preferably slowly and painfully.

I've seen cable produced creature features that were at least watchable but this was not one of them.

Before I tell you what this movie was let me tell you what it wasn't. It wasn't scary, it wasn't a horror, it wasn't suspenseful, it wasn't thrilling, it wasn't intriguing, and it wasn't good. I didn't know it was possible to feel the complete apathy I felt watching this.

Here's what it was: it was terrible. Mind bogglingly terrible.

I know that movies have their clichés, I get it, but this movie didn't even remain consistent with the rules it established. A poor CGI, fire mouthed, tree limbed beast is killing all the Islanders. Gauging the corpses everywhere it is a pretty efficient killer--well until three clueless sisters come along, then it becomes a stalking, creeping killer. The type of killer that gives its prey plenty of time to run, hide or devise a plan. The type of killer that's easily distracted by other prey simply because it's on the screen.

I was simply amazed at the CGI monster's ability to make this movie last 85 minutes. It truly knew that it was on screen and it milked it for all it was worth. It stopped and posed elaborately. It growled and roared and screamed. It showed a full array of monster emotion thereby giving it credibility. Sadly, I don't think it will get a star on the Monster Walk of Fame. It's still no Blob, Alien, Predator, Pennywise or just about every other film creature. In fact it was just lame.

I'm pretty sure that a full 2/3 of this script was just the word "Emma".... Is that a spoiler? I don't think that's a spoiler. If anything, it's the only thing this movie has going for it. I want to say it's the acting that's miserable, but it's probably the writing and the directing as well. The monster is uninspired, the pacing is acidic, and.... (is this five lines yet?)

OK, I've already spent more time on this review than the movie deserves. You can do better! Somewhere out there is paint that is drying! Go watch that!

I watched another syfy production, around a year ago, Scarecrow, which I liked, the monster concept, the almost plot, acting the whole package got me curious. This one seemed to be a copy cat but I was wrong, really wrong.

The Hollow is a very weak movie, from a very bad script, to a director that couldn't do much, to actors that did not convince whatsoever, to plot holes and so many other things absolutely impossible to explain and so on, and so on. It got a 3 from me, probably its grade will be rounded up to a 4 and a little, but I honestly believe it deserves less.

We all know that syfy channel doesn't bring huge productions, but it is known to pleasantly surprise from time to time, yet right here, they looked like The Asylum. Bad all the way. The most absolute horror moves will be used in The Hollow.

Cheers!