Hallow Road

I feel a bit gaslit by this one as critics and audience reviews are pretty good but I just didn't connect with it.

Hallow Road takes place in near real time mostly inside of a car as two parents race to the scene of an accident (on "Hallow Road") their daughter has been involved in. I say "near" real time because the drive is only 40 minutes and yet surely takes up longer in the movie as it's ~80%+ of the runtime.

The problem for me is that this felt like a cheap episode of a TV drama that would be shown on ITV. The parents were annoying, particularly the father and the car setting began to get tedious, especially every time the sat-nav told the audience how far we had to go. For some this will rachet up tension and desperation to get there quicker, but for me the journey felt like a slow crawl.

For me the ending left much to be desired. An earlier throwaway line about how the parents "will never find resolution" felt like expectations management from the director - when I heard this I prepared for the worst and was still disappointed. Another cop out ending in a critically acclaimed indie movie? Surely not?!

The second twist is revealed when the lights come up, but this one itself was largely guessable if you were paying attention - but even if you weren't, spelling it out in this fashion felt like an odd bolt-on to the movie. It would have benefitted from being included in the film and not the credits.

Overall Hallow Road is a largely tepid, slightly creepy story of parents rushing to the aid of the child but I now grow weary of so many indie films choosing to use amibiguity as a means to add weight to their story. Sometimes I would just like a tied up ending.

When parents "Maddie" (Rosamund Pike) and husband "Frank" (Matthew Rhys) get a call from their teenage daughter to say she has been in a road accident, they immediately get into their car and head to the quite far distant and remote scene. The rest of the film sees the couple trying to think what is best to do as the paramedic mother tries to help with an immediate problem whilst the father takes a more long-term and sacrificial view in the event of a worst case scenario. Things only get more fraught when another couple encounter "Alice" first and her folks become increasingly concerned that their "help" might only make matters even worse! With only the intensity of their car as the scenario as this all takes place via the telephone, and what I must admit was probably the slowest and/or safest driving to the site of an accident I've ever witnessed on film (or anywhere else, for that matter) we are introduced to a couple with demons galore and a somewhat confused sense of the ridiculous and of their own priorities. It's that very superficiality and flakiness that makes this a bit more potent than your average thriller and at times it has a characterful intensity akin to a late night radio play with limited visuals and audio: just two people and an increasingly effective and frenzied script. Rhys tends to overact a bit but Pike and the gripping pace of the film deliver something that asks what we might do for our kids, but in a much less typical and frankly more pragmatic fashion. It's only eighty minutes long and that really helps to keep the film focussed and though it isn't a film you are likely to recall for very long, it does work well enough on a big screen.

Horror thrives in confined, singular locations-and "Hallow Road" is no exception.

While technically set across a few places, the core of the film unfolds almost entirely inside a car, driven by tense, unsettling dialogue that rarely lets up.

It's hard to discuss this film without revealing too much, but that's the thrill of film criticism: unpacking themes without spoiling the experience.

Directed by Babak Anvari, "Hallow Road" fits neatly into the "dashcam cinema"-a horror sub-genre where most of the story unfolds through dashboard or onboard camera footage, heightening realism and claustrophobia.

The film's strength lies in the performances of its three leads: Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys as a married couple, and Megan McDonnell as their daughter, Alice. Together, they balance parental instinct with quiet dread, delivering performances that emotionally anchor the film.

When Alice calls her mother in a panic-having hit and killed a girl on the remote Hallow Road in the fictional town of Ashfolk-it sets off a psychological mystery told almost entirely through a phone call and in-car dialogue.

The cinematography is cloaked in shadow, using the night not just as a setting, but as a symbol of the unknown-where every frame hums with mystery, suppressed fear, and the creeping sense that something is just out of sight.

As a viewer, you're confined with the parents-just their car, a phone, and Alice's disembodied voice guiding you through a spiral of guilt, fear, and confusion.

The film explores how language can disturb more deeply than imagery, and how those we trust most can become sources of dread.

"Hallow Road" is a haunting meditation on parenting, moral ambiguity, and the fragile boundary between safety and threat.

It's the kind of horror that doesn't scream-it lingers, whispering long after the screen fades to black.

STAR RATING: ***** Brilliant **** Very Good *** Okay ** Poor * Awful

Maddie (Rosamund Pike), a paramedic, and her husband, Frank (Matthew Rhys), are a middle class couple, who receive a late night phone call from their teenage daughter, Alice (Megan McDonnell), who has been involved in a hit and run incident. The pair race to the scene, keeping in touch on speaker phone, but as they do, tensions erupt between the couple, before things take a sinister turn.

For those not lulled in by the big new Mission: Impossible film, this little (virtually un) publicised film might be a decent distraction. After checking the running time, it becomes quickly evident that it's another addition from the 'real time' staple (with events playing out exactly as they occur with no cuts) , the last I can remember being Paul Andrew Williams's 2010 effort Cherry Tree Lane.

In a film with pretty much only two cast members, Pike and Rhys play well off each other, and develop an effective chemistry as a couple with conflicting approaches and attitudes towards their daughter, and what may have led to and how to resolve her current predicament. Likewise, McDonnell does well in a voiceover role, descending further into distress and disbelief while her happy, carefree profile picture stares back at us. It's all genuinely compelling and inspired , until an unwelcome supernatural element is added to the story that detracts from the realism of the events. Indeed, it's at this late point that we suddenly learn the film is set at Halloween (which may have been foreshadowed by the Hallow in the title.)

It remains genuinely suspenseful until the end, which comes in not the most comprehensible fashion, with matters feeling unresolved. Could have been highly recommendable, if it had just stayed on track. ***

Hallow Road is a film that completely surprised me. I knew nothing about it going in, and was absorbed from start to finish.

It is a short, sharp, tense, and gripping affair that is contained in largely to three performances, a car, and a phone conversation. I won't go into many more plot details as it is best approached cold, as you go on the journey with the characters. I've seen some people quibble with the third act and the direction the film takes. Whether the final moments are a satisfying conclusion only you can determine. I do think there is a nice amount of ambiguity left in the ending though which leaves it up to you to decide, and for me it worked quite well.

The performances from Matthew Rhys and Rosamund Pike are both brilliant. They capture every emotion possible and really take you on the emotional rollercoaster with them.

Hallow Road is an utter surprise and a simple but thoroughly effective suspense thriller.