THE STORY – A couple receive a distressing late-night call from their teenage daughter after she accidentally hits a pedestrian. Jumping in their car, they race to get there before anyone else stumbles across the scene. As they head deeper into the night, disturbing revelations threaten to tear the family apart.
THE CAST – Rosamund Pike, Matthew Rhys & Megan McDonnell
THE TEAM – Babak Anvari (Director) & William Gillies (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 80 Minutes
Some scripts seem to have been written as a challenge to filmmakers, daring them to not only bring them to life but to do so in a way that’s compelling, entertaining, and effective, despite the hurdles the screenplay builds. “Hallow Road” is certainly one of those films, with a concept that could be entirely uncinematic. Incredibly, director Babak Anvari is up to the task, and what he’s brought to the screen is nothing short of utterly terrifying. Despite having a finite setting and as small a cast as can be found outside a one-person show, he’s crafted a true nightmare on film, one that starts bad and keeps getting worse.
The setting? A car. The cast? Two actors. And that’s basically it. Anvari’s on-screen pair is the effortlessly talented Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys, playing a married couple named Maddie and Frank. As the film opens, Maddie is trying to reach their college-age daughter, Alice (Megan McDonnell in a voice-only performance), who has fled their home in Frank’s car after an unseen explosive argument. When Maddie finally gets Alice on the phone in the extremely early hours of the morning, it’s immediately clear that something’s wrong. There’s been an accident, and Alice needs her paramedic mother to help her out over the phone. The couple immediately jumps in Maddie’s car and heads out to find their daughter, who’s stuck on Hallow Road – an extremely secluded and rarely-driven street that goes through the heart of a dense forest. They try to keep Alice on the phone as long as possible, but as they talk to her, it becomes clear that the situation is far more complicated, dangerous, and frightening than they initially thought.
Aside from two brief but chilling sequences that bookend the film, the entire movie takes place in real time inside the couple’s car as they race to their daughter’s aid. It’s a bold concept to write a film so limited in terms of what a filmmaker can do, given the restrictions of the setting. But Anvari proves himself an innovative director, finding a multitude of ways to shoot within the boxed-in location. He varies the lengths of the takes, with some longer ones allowing the actors to perform in almost theatrical fashion without the crutch of cuts. And at other times, he jumps between camera angles, amplifying the frantic energy of the two frightened parents by shifting the audience’s perspective. Anvari also finds clever ways to visualize inherently uncinematic objects and technologies, such as the GPS map or the voice coming out of the phone. These visual choices grow increasingly abstract as the film goes on, emphasizing how deep in the water Maddie and Frank are. The road they’re driving down only brings them closer and closer to something upsetting, something unpredictable, and Anvari makes the audience feel similarly unsure of what to believe through unexpected screen images. Not every aspect of the film looks pristine; some shots of the road unspooling in front of the car make the movie’s small-scale limitations obvious. But it’s easily forgivable when the film is otherwise so effective at placing viewers in the panicked headspace of its characters.
“Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys deliver great performances” is a bit of an unnecessary statement for any review of their work to have to include. And yet, it must be said. The two extraordinarily gifted actors are marvelous here, and thank goodness, because for a movie as reliant on its two leads as this one, no amount of smart directorial flourishes or clever screenwriting would be able to rescue it from the hands of lackluster performers. Indeed, the limitations of the film essentially makes “Hallow Road” something like an acting exercise. But not to worry, Pike and Rhys are up to the challenge. Rhys plays a short-tempered man who lets his emotions get the best of him in this time of crisis. And even though some of the decisions he makes are frustrating (albeit understandable, given the situation), he’s so lived-in that his character never strains truthfulness. Pike, on the other hand, plays a woman who’s able to keep calm under pressure – a necessity given her high-stakes job. When she’s talking her daughter through paramedic procedures over the phone, Pike delivers with total assurance and steadiness, effortlessly reciting complicated steps and medical terms in a totally believable way. But that doesn’t mean that she’s entirely bottled up. When things really go haywire, she lets her emotions out, perfectly embodying a parent who would do anything to protect their child, no matter the circumstances.
The two performances help sell the gravity of what’s happened, making the audience feel the weight of the situation and the possibility of the upsetting, inevitable consequences. William Gillies’s screenplay is exceptionally well-paced in this regard, ramping up tension in unexpected ways. This is a story about a bad situation that somehow, unthinkably, manages to continually get worse, and Gillies’s writing builds in a painfully tense manner. It’s a truly armrest-gripping thriller.
“Hallow Road” plays out like an excellent, extended episode of “The Twilight Zone,” taking every parent’s worst nightmare and putting it on the screen in a way that offers little in the way of relief. Director Babak Anvari – who also made the excellent “Under the Shadow” nearly a decade ago – further proves that he’s a master of suspense. For those who like their thrillers tense, unpredictable, and totally engrossing, be sure to take a drive down “Hallow Road.”
