The Hallow review

An English family settles in rural Ireland, but they are not welcome in the woods…

The Hallow is a first time feature from short and music video maker Corin Hardy, based on his own screenplay and borrowing some ideas from Irish mythology.

When you get right down to it, the film is basically a creature feature with the setting being used to make reference to stories and legends of faeries as an excuse have some pretty creepy monsters show up to do bad things every now and then.

Those beasties are pretty great, organic and beslimed and prone to pop up pretty much anywhere. Elements of the design and their back story reminded me of aspects of Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us but Hardy has enough of his own ideas to keep them interesting.

He’s also got a great eye for visuals, especially the flaming scythe which rightfully adorns a lot of the poster art for the film. Though The Hallow was shot on a low budget over a couple of months in Ireland it’s dripping with atmosphere and seems to remember that it’s ok for a cheap horror effort to look good and be in focus. Props to shooter Martijn van Broekhuizen.

The effects are great, with a subtle mix of practical and CG elements that makes for some unsettling moment, but beyond that things are a little less successful.

The story feels roughly hewn, with little character development or sense of progression and the dialogue is often bland. There’s a middling grasp of Irish mythology and a fairly negative portrayal of the locals, played by Michaels McElhatton and Smiley.

Leads Joseph Mawle and Bojana Novakovic aren’t bad but they don’t have much to do except be British and be scared. As for those scares, there are surprisingly few. The Hallow doesn’t seem overly concerned with creating tension and terror, relying more on creepy visuals and occasional shocks.

The Hallow feels like a film where the visuals and design were heavily developed at the expense of almost everything else. Still it should have some appeal to horror fans looking for a creepy creature to while away an afternoon.