Minimalist, two-handers, almost individual horror thrillers that develop in real time can-and should-take a number of formal and narrative freedoms, but it is crucial that they use them to take us all the way to the place they have in mind. The latest film by British-Iranian director Annari round (“Under the Shadow”) gets us only halfway before it gets lost in a fog of its own elevated ideas.
The story of two synchronized parents flying down a highway at night to save their daughter after she crashed into a girl while driving through a creepy forest, “Hallow Road“Make a very tense clock that will have audiences that flock to the nearest dive or social media platform to map Easter eggs and foam over magnificent semiotics. Unfortunately, the film never exceeds its tone of constantly present and tangible danger of becoming a more satisfactory character.
A degree of removal is anchored in the film’s very performance and execution. It starts with anvari and DP Kit Fraser’s choice to clearly switch from 16mm film to digital early. “Hallow Road“Opens with delicious shots through a Nether Forest of Spirit whispers, and then a saucepan to a girl’s shoe abandoned in the moss. The aftermath of a folkloristic horror? From there, still on celluloid, we cut into a warm illuminated middle -class home, as the camera deliberately swings through clues: an unfinished meal, semi -consumed glass of wine, carved pumpkins (Ah, it is Halloween) and crushed glass swept to the corner. Drama!
Maddie (Rosamund Pike), who sleeps in the bedroom, and Frank (Matthew Rhys), passed out on the desk at his home office, wakes up by a hectic call from their teenage daughter Alice (Megan McDonnell), which we only know the whole movie of her voice on the phone and a sweet profile picture. We share that Maddie and Frank had an argument with Alice, after which she fled with her car and now panes after the bizarre accident. They rush to her help, and as soon as Frank enters the address of Pike’s Bil’s GPS – “Hallow Road” – the frame, as heartless clockwork, rivets to digital.
The next hour takes place completely inside the car, with Rhys and pike swinging between barked orders, painful grounds, petrified silences and some real ben-crunching SFX. Caught together with these two fine actors, we become more familiar with Maddie and Frank as characters. Maddie is a paramedic and thus a detector. She detects pulses, children under the influence and accuracy of the time of breast pumps, which she commands the poor, High Alice to perform on the girl she ran in the forest.
But even though she is the more rational and righteous for her parents, Maddie has a bad case of overestimating the relevance of her vocational education for the accident. That’s what Frank thinks, at least. He is the opposite of his wife in every way: the emotional, victim parent, a temperament that fits as a bad suit on his bland persona as marketing manager. It is a sartorial mistake that Rhys carries as well as he can, the actor’s performance a thousand miles away from his charming, oxidized tag on Perry Mason.
Things just get less exciting when the night wears, as loose plot threads are mixed with predictable secrets that these characters have held on since the film began. For screenwriter William Gillies, the attractive immediacy seems to free the absence of history. Anvari is willing to work with it as he leans into the uncertainty and dizzy suspension that is driven by the film’s story.
On paper, anvaris should work many innovations. A little to no Foley of the car, get no anchoring shoots from the road from the car, and a deliberately simplified GPS – with a tongue in the cheek that the parents are in unkind territory – worse to keep us on the edge. Phrases, in turn, distract us by making the interior of the car a chamberbit of organic lighting (does not complain, with this role), at least until halfway marks when the story cares for its alter-ego, turns from thriller to fear. In this twilight zone, extreme close-ups of Maddie and Frank’s terrified eyes, the sudden depiction of the way in soft focus and the forest’s AI-like reproduction are directly disoriented.
And yet we don’t feel as terrified for The characters who ange and Gillies appreciate that we will do. A basic link remains between the elevated treatment of the genric mix and the filmmakers’ ability to generate an earthed, genuine fear of Frank, Maddie and especially Alice.
The upside of “Hallow Road’s” Pure Genre training is that Anvari finds the sunny side up of this terrible nightly nowhere to move. The disadvantage is that he also denies us the pleasure of playing with folkloric horror tropes. When a seemingly good Samaritan character shows up – like Alice, is only heard over the phone – is our hackers immediately raised – how can a voice so saccharin cause so much fear? Before we can really chew on her references to Piper or project other gloomy fairy tales on Alice’s fate, Gillies and anvari trip in fifth tools, a meta mode, with characters that spray lines like “I want a better story”, “I asked all the wrong questions” and “I make you unpleasant?” Then, in the end, the filmmakers completely leave Simulacrum with a doozy of a reveal.
The problem is that it is really difficult to be both modernist and postmodernist to the same extent, and it feels insignificant to have events refer to real feelings when you are also so quick to flow the veil. To do so regret the intention behind Anvaris’s choice and leaves the cinematic text too open. I felt trapped for too long in the film’s unpleasant valleys, my mind accelerates to the formal and narrative virtues of other, more successful films that overlap with this: Coral and the other mother’s concrete symbolism; the focused existential crisis of LocheThe main character; And even the more serious attempt by another SXSW endless road film, “It ends“To reinvent the genre wheels. If only this one did not feel so free long after it has come to its destination.
Rating: C+
“Hallow Road” premiered at SXSW 2025. It is currently seeking US distribution.
Want to keep you updated on IndieWire’s movie Reviews And critical thoughts? Subscribe here To our recently launched newsletter, in review by David Ehrlich, where our main film critic and Head Review’s editor rounds off the best new reviews and streaming choices along with some exclusive Musings – all only available for subscribers.
