Hollows Grove

I can't believe the good reviews here, the only good thing I can say about this haunted hospital mess is that it might be slightly better than that nepotistic abomination from Oliver Stone's kid and some other movie that tried way too hard for lovable characters and scares and failed on both, and that one was set in a prison hospital, so if you want to be picky then it doesn't count here. I also can't recall the titles of those movies and don't care enough to find them again, so they may actually be better than Hollows Grove.

First, the dialog the characters use for their show's narrative is so insipid, inane and uninformative that I could almost believe it was intentionally done as a statement on the stupidity of the typical reality show, but I don't know if I can give the writers that much credit, since the characters' dialog is just as bad in their interactions with each other. The film also feels like it takes forever to get anywhere, focusing too much and too long on building cliché characters who ultimately contribute nothing to the story beyond a body count.

I did wind up giving the film three stars for some of the better effects, but I think I was feeling too generous. And I won't even talk about the FBI ending, as that was bad enough to cause the entire film to lose a star, now that I think about it.

You want the same storyline? Just watch Grave Encounters again.

Lance Henrikson has become a horror icon. He's protected the Antichrist, fought the Terminator, battled demons, Aliens and Predators. He's been in over 200 movies and now he's in a found footage horror movie. Too bad he only has 2 scenes.

I went into this thinking it would be along the lines of Grave Encounters, which I really like, and it sort of is. The problem is that it's missing most of the scares. Whereas Grave Encounters went right for the jugular, this one has most of the spooky stuff happening off camera (singing and whispering heard, things disappearing when an area is returned to). The setting is creepy and some genuinely frightening stuff happens near the end, but it is almost too late by then.

Hollows Grove did keep me interested throughout however and is definitely worth a watch for fans of these types of movies. 6.5/10.

The acting is pretty bad. The guy who plays Chad is the best of the lot I'd say. Matt Doherty is up there in the absolute worst horror movie actors I've seen. I actually looked him up on IMDb just to see who he was and what other acting jobs he'd gotten, which is when I decided to leave a review. There were a couple scenes where I laughed out loud from the absurdity of his acting.

The plot and script are decent. Overall, if it's a rainy day, you've blown through everything on Netflix that looks good to you, and you have nothing else to do, give it a look. There are some okay jump scares and a few creepy moments. Lance Henriksen was a pleasant surprise. It's always interesting to see where he'll pop up.

I was lucky enough to see a pre-screening of this movie, but I have to say that if I paid too see it in theaters, I wouldn't have been disappointed. For a scary movie, especially a low budget one, this is really good. Initially everybody watching it with me complained about the slow build and the fact that we were sick of the flood of "home movie" style scary movies. But this movie made up did it all very well. For starters, the home movie style isn't the same as in most movies. The camera isn't constantly running, shaking, flipping, and falling. It's steady for about 90% of the movie, and I thoroughly appreciate that. And the slow build I spoke about earlier is necessary, it helped me to settle in before it scared me. Which it definitely did. It didn't do it with crazy cheap scares or jump scenes, but with that slow build I mentioned earlier. It built the tension and then cut through it. The characters are pretty well developed and the acting is good. Nobody is going to win any Oscars for this, but I wasn't left wanting anything from the actors. Everybody played their part, and they played it well. The story is the usual "we go to a haunted place and discover it's actually haunted" but the perspective is pretty different. Though the movie was semi-predictable, it kept me and everybody I watched it with on the edge of our seats, especially near the end. My only real complaint about this movie is the beginning and end scenes with the detective. It made it seem too much like an interactive movie at Universal Studios or something. But stay after the credits, and the bad ending scene makes up for itself.

I think all of the budget went on paying for Lance Henriksen to appear in this film even though it was just for a couple of scenes. The production value is fine the acting for what is needed for this basic film is fine but in the end it's nothing but a pretty standard found footage film, a few jump scares, lots of noise off camera etc.

Even the classic line of "Film Everything" was used.

I'm suposed to say more to take this up to over the required character count but there really isn't much more I can say as it's just a so so film so here are some random words. Sad, boring, pointless etc etc.