The Hollow

I must complain about the polarization of these reviews. This movie is neither a 1 nor a 10. It's a solid somewhere right in the middle. Most of the actors have been around awhile and done interesting work. The hick town is believable and the characters are, too.

Best to me, though, is the script. I swear the dialogue is straight out of my youth.

So haters and trolls, begone. Stop messing with folks who really care.

It was deleted.

Staff, please check before you delete, that it does not violate guidelines, and in fact, the reviews that should be deleted are all the fake ones which probably have the same originating address.

In any case, let me put this debate to rest right now. I'd never seen a film with such polarizing reviews, and neither side quite convinced me. After all, the positive reviews did in fact seem a little too similar in their wording and enthusiasm, and the negative reviews were somewhat harsh. No movie could be that bad, could it? As such, I decided to get to the bottom of this. I looked for clips of The Hollow on You know where and found them plus more.

Without further ado, the bad reviews are correct.

I clicked randomly at first, and every scene I stopped on, topped the last scene for laughably bad. I then went through it again (scanned it, as I couldn't bring myself to watch all of it), in an attempt to find one, just one scene that was good. No such scene exists.

Hopefully this puts the matter to rest, not in that you need to take my word for it, but that you can go catch it yourself.

Miles Doleac is not a good director, writer or actor. In fact, he's a quack and a hack who needs fake reviews to try and convince people his film are any good. The blatant attempts at rigging and manipulating ratings should be exposed. It is my sincere hope that if this director tries it again on anything else he is involved in, people will have a heads up and not fall for it as some did with this garbage.

I really wanted to like this movie. As I began watching I couldn't understand the negative reviews. I quickly began to see the issues, but I kept watching. I never felt suspense over the murders, and even though that wasn't the intended focus, it was the reason for the entire movie. Most of the characters were expendable, I had little sympathy for the characters that were developed because they were not well developed, and there was no tension or build up to the very lackluster end.

A sort of a challenge for reviewers.

First time I watched The Hollow, I made the following notes:

* good attempt at film noir.

* overlong and quality fluctuates wildly from scene to scene. Sometimes you think you are watching an A-list production on the big screen and sometimes you think you are watching a stage play at the local dinner theatre.

* nice use of known "character actors" recycled into almost (but not quite) leading roles. Interesting.

* common problem with B-movies (B+ movies?) is that everything is much too clean. Supposedly we are in the deep south on one of the hottest days of the year and all the actors are wearing clothes that look like they are freshly dry-cleaned, no sweat or dirt anywhere, even the cars are shiny like they just left the car wash...?? (To see this done properly, get a copy of In the Heat of the Night!).

* actor playing Ray-Ray pulls ahead of the pack and steals every scene he is in. Real potential, real charisma, real talent.

And then I check out the credits and find the actor I noticed is also the writer, the director and the chief cook-and-bottle-washer.

Not too shabby.

Miles Doleac is more interesting than the movie. He's got mad skills.

First of all, if people are going to write fake reviews, they need to be a little less 'enthusiastic' and more realistic when it comes to honestly terrible movies.

There is NO way in the WORLD anyone that is not shilling this movie could give it a 10. There is JUST NO WAY.

The plot is maybe the only thing that deserves 1-Star. The rest is a ZERO. The acting is horrendous. Seriously, you could find better acting on a soap opera. The southern accents are laughable and absurd.

The casting, was horrendous. Not one, not two, not three, but FOUR actresses that look almost exactly the same (I actually thought that would turn out to be a part of the plot, but it wasn't), NO chemistry between the leads, one of the main actors came across as a whiny, crying, sniveling loser instead of what his role placed him as, the others were complete caricatures of a bad parody wherein the butt of the supposed jokes are hillbillies and rednecks, the other main actor just seemed bored and stiff and like he REALLY didn't want to be there. I didn't want to be there either.

It is just utterly BAD. Awful. Horrendously terrible.

IF you actually opt to watch this, DON'T say you weren't warned. Oh, and come back, as penance, and leave a review in order to save another poor schmuck the pain.