Hallow Road
It is the nightmare of every parent, the argument with the child, the slamming of the front door then the car door as she drives away in anger, the hours of silence until after two in the morning, Maddie Finch pulled from her sleep first by the dead battery alert on the smoke alarm then a call from her daughter Alice, knowing immediately that something must be terribly wrong.
Wanting to be alone instead of going back to her flat, Alice was driving on Hallow Road when a girl stepped out and was knocked down. Rousing her husband Frank, paramedic Maddie gives Alice instructions on how to perform CPR, forty minutes out and too far to be of any other help, waiting for the ambulance to arrive and the professionals to take over the resuscitation attempt.
Directed by Under the Shadow’s Babak Anvari from a screenplay by William Gillies, like that film of fear and repression Hallow Road is set in an enclosed, albeit moving, location, focused entirely on Maddie and Frank in their darkened car, moving towards Ashfolk Forest where they used to holiday as a family when Alice was a child, he emotional to the point of becoming irrational while she tries to remain calm as she vicariously tries to manage the situation.
Almost entirely a two-hander which never leaves the side of the parents, Rosamund Pike is Maddie, aware that her daughter may not be telling the whole truth, while Matthew Rhys is Frank, willing to do anything to ensure this incident does not scar his precious daughter or mar her future opportunities, powerless but trying to take control and even suggesting that they lie to the police, while the never-seen Megan McDonnell is the terrified voice on the phone.
The shadows of the forest shifting in the car headlights, seeming to move too slowly, a contrast to the disturbed domesticity of the abandoned meal left on the kitchen table, one plate unused and a broken wine glass on the floor, try as they might the well-intentioned parents cannot make it better, the camera never leaving them as their growing dread crystallises and fractures appear as arguments lead to ill-spoken words.
Never stated in dialogue but the dashboard screen confirming that it is the early morning of 31st October, Hallowe’en, what starts as a tense drama moves more into the territory of horror when an increasingly belligerent stranger arrives at the scene before they do, asking questions Alice cannot answer, Hallow Road a minimalist nightmare of dread which deepens as it enters the dark woods, any tenuous hopes Maddie and Frank carried doused by the inevitability of arrival.
Hallow Road is currently on general release
