Hollow

I love found footage movies. I adored Paranormal Activity, and I'm a huge apologist for The Blair Witch Project as well as, recently, V/H/S. This gimmick, and it is definitely a gimmick, has potential to make for classic horror when put in the right hands.

That didn't happened here. Michael Axelgaard is the definition of the wrong hands.

Hollow is the worst found footage movie I've seen so far. It represents perfectly everything that's wrong with this gimmick, and how easily it can be abused.

Ideally, the first person format should be used to assist in the storytelling. With Paranormal Activity, the movie is all about creating a realistic setting, and much of the plot revolves around observing your room as you sleep. I can't imagine that as a traditionally shot film. It taking place on the protagonist's camera is important.

Movies like Hollow don't use this filmmaking style as a tool; they use it as an excuse.

It's an excuse to make your low budget, equivalent to that of a student film, seem less obvious; an excuse to never actually show anything substantial; an excuse to never fully develop your characters; an excuse to point the camera at someone's feet for minutes at a time and get away with it.

On top of that, nearly every single scare in Hollow is a fake out. The character will point the camera at something, or start to walk somewhere, and things will get quiet. Suddenly, the camera SUDDENLY CUTS to something else, or a bird will fly out.

These can be fun sometimes, but when the ratio of fake out scares to real scares is roughly 9 to 1, there's a serious issue. That number is probably too generous.

Now let's talk about the actual scares. What I mean by this is times we or the characters are frightened by something that turns out to be a real threat - the difference between a cat jumping out at you, and a monster jumping out at you.

I can recall maybe three in the entire film.

And who is the villain, exactly? The closest we get is a tree, which never actually does anything sinister (that skull on the poster is a complete lie), and a jacket. A character's coat becomes one of the major threats of the final act.

The rest of the film is a combination of useless filler scenes, mostly revolving around relationship drama that not even these actors seem to care about, and scenes of characters running around screaming as the camera points at the ground, with the viewer not being able to see anything.

The ending is puzzling. Not because it's surprising, but because it's so spectacularly unsurprising that you can't help but scratch your head. The movie forecasts exactly what will happen from the opening scene, and then by the end, it happens. And that's it. It never even attempts to offer anything else.

Hollow is essentially 90 minutes of watching vacation footage your douche bag kind-of-but-not-really friends shot while snorting cocaine and screaming about haunted trees.

But other than that, it was pretty good.

Resembles Blair Witch Project which I've never seen. All the hand held camera shots do not work. There is a reason professional actors are paid so much. They are good. These amateur actors, if you can call them that, are awful. I watched first 1/2 hour and bailed. This is a complete waste of time.

I remember seeing this movie at the Fantasia Festival in Montreal. I am a big fan of those Found Footage movies... really I do love them, but That movie... boring... bland... forgettable at most.

I kinda felt bad in the theater... the producer and director where present and were happy to present us the movie in exclusivity... people seemed happy and all in the room... but by the time the movie ended, it was dead silence... the movie crew were standing in front of the screen, waiting for perhaps some cheering or even question from the viewers... but Nothing... everyone in the theater were bummed and leaving silently. Producers were standing still in an awkward silent room with people trying to flee. Yeah the movie is that bad.

HOLLOW is the British version of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, or should I say the British rip-off because this is a complete riff on that classic film. Of course, it's nowhere near as good, but fans of the found footage genre might enjoy a few spooky moments here and there.

For the most part, though, this is a missed opportunity. This film was especially interesting to me given that I was involved in my own BLAIR WITCH-style spoof back in the day and I had a lot of fun making it. Plus the locations are dear to my heart, and this was filmed just up the road from me. What a shame that for 90% of the running time the viewer is stuck with a quartet of detestable characters who alternate between boring and stupid. We're stuck with them as they argue, snort coke, and generally waste time until the next scare scene.

There is good stuff here, involving creepy foxes and some wonderfully evoked rural locations - that tree and the ruins are atmospheric without the film-makers even trying - but it's lost in a welter of average acting and sheer mediocrity. When the horror hits, there's way too much deafening screaming and the scares feel oddly diluted. In retrospect, I'd stick with THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT.

To review this movie in one sentence, it would have been - We have seen it all before. This is a very typical 'horror' movie and if you have seen many budget horror movies before, this movie will feel very familiar. What makes this one worse than average is that it does not really have any thing special. It is an extremely bland movie. I can imagine that this movie was thrown together very quickly. Honestly, it even feels as if was made up on the spot.

It starts pretty okay actually, well, not bad anyway. But even from the beginning everything feels very familiar. It is your regular intro/start of a horror movie. But when the movie tries to scare you, it is not scary at all. Every situation feels dragged out. In horror movies you are suppose to get scared when you least expect it. In Hollow, you end up asking the movie to please, scare me already! It is the very opposite of what a horror movie should be.

I actually had to look up what year this was produced. I would understand if it was right after The Blair Witch Project, when pretty much the found footage genre was new. There was not much to learn from back then. But this is from 2011(!). There are tons of great found footage horror movies released when Hollow was made. Tons of movies to get inspiration from. The overall 'horror level' in this movie could be explained as bland in lack for better words.

Movies I would recommend instead of this one is Them/Ils (2006), or even Chernobyl Diaries (2012). Many doesn't even like the latter, but compared to Hollow, it is the most hectic action movie you can find.