The Hollow

The cliché "I wish that I could have that time back" really applies to this title. It's formulaic and derivative in the extreme with little to hold your interest, even over the short running time.

You won't care about the characters, any of them. The dynamic of the three sisters is probably the biggest failing in this sorry tale. It just doesn't develop any credible sense that they are actually sisters and have a bond. The tried and trusted "falling out and friends again when the chips are down" story thread just didn't work for me. The story is paper-thin and not executed well in any way. It's in not remotely scary and the attempts at building any sort of tension fail miserably.

Please avoid. Life is too short.

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.

The concept before anything was actually written into a script may have actually had potential. OK listen there is a long list of b movie horror flicks from the 70s and 80s like Attack of the Killer Tomatoes and the Blob. I can't even recall those comedic works. Maybe they were the same quality. I don't remember. All I know is the concept of a creature that comes out during Halloween is not new, but it's not a bad one, the writing however was atrocious, and the main actors were so beyond appalling, I feel embarrassed for them in 20 years from now this will surface and they will feel utterly ashamed for starring in this movie. But most of all the screen writer and producer and director who sat in their chair and actually went ahead with this. Unless the aim was to make the most atrocious film with the most atrocious actors ever on purpose. Then it was a major success. I can't even take this at face value, and I try to do that when I'm watching different genres of movies and not have different expectations. Ugh.

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!