Backwoods monster movie is a hit and miss
By Pablo Suarez
The Hallow is a very atmospheric feature which goes downhill pitifully toward the end
With the ill-fated task of going deep into Ireland’s rural landscape, British conservationist and tree doctor Adam Hitchens (Joseph Mawle) has to venture into the woods and decide which trees are correct for milling. As you’d expect, the townspeople tell him that he’s a stranger, that he shouldn’t be there, and that in the woods there’s land that belongs to the Hallow, little ancient tree fairies once driven from their sacred lands.
Of course, Adam and his wife Claire (Bojana Novakovic) ignore the warnings, and move into an isolated mill house along with their baby. And yes, soon they will have to fight to survive against demonic creatures living in the woods.
Largely inspired in Irish fables and mythology, Corin Hardy’s The Hallow, also known as The Woods, is not your usual lousy horror film of the week that’s made with no sense of style or narrative. On the contrary: The Hallow is a very atmospheric feature, with an overall sense of doom, plenty wickedness and obscurity, and with an assured narrative — that is until the third act, meaning the last half hour, when it goes downhill pitifully. Great step up, fine development, and pretty awful downfall.
Perhaps there are also too many elements tossed into one movie: demonic creatures (monster movie), fairy tale mythology, the family in ever-growing danger (a baby’s life at great risk), infectious zombie fungus, a hunted house also under siege, and a few other surprises better not to be disclosed here.
Yes, it may be too much, but that’s not necessarily a problem because for the most part the amalgam works quite well since each element is introduced within its own logic and it is thematically and even aesthetically connected to the others. Leaving the accomplished cohesion aside, what’s even better is that The Hallow is one of those films that hinge heavily on a very good use of cinematography — the lighting design doesn’t get any better — and multi-layered sound design to create a maddening, frightening, and often relentless ambiance of shock and surprise.
Plus the performances are more than fine and so you have real life people, and not the usual dumb skulls of so many of today’s horror films, hence you can care for them as much as you cared for your favourite horror film victims. Dialogue is accordingly realistic. So far, so good.
But then comes the third act. And what a mess it is. For starters, this is when the previous cohesion found in the many trends of horror is not to be found anymore. The screenplay takes all the possible wrong turns, because it’s trying to figure out which is the way to go — and finds none. And it’s all done so abruptly, in a way that betrays the carefully-crafted rhythm achieved before.
In the end, you can see a better film could’ve been made with some of all these elements, that is, because less is usually more.
Production notes
The Hallow (US, 2015). Directed by Corin Hardy. Written by Corin Hardy, Felipe Marino. With Joseph Mawle, Bojana Novakovic, Michael McElhatton, Michael Smiley. Cinematography: Martijn Van Broekhuizen. Editing: Nick Emerson. Running time: 97 minutes.
@pablsuarez
