For today’s review, we’re traveling to a remote forest in Ireland for The Hallow (formerly called The Woods), which had its premiere at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. The directorial debut of Corin Hardy (who would later go on to helm The Nun, the 2018 entry into the sprawling Conjuring universe), The Hallow is a pretty straightforward horror film, being essentially a simple “family in a secluded farmhouse attacked by creatures” flick. In fact, picture The Evil Dead but without the humor or wackiness and with evil Irish fairies instead of demons and rapey trees, and you’re most of the way there.
The movie follows Adam (Joseph Mawle from Game of Thrones), his wife Claire (Bojana Novakovic), and their baby son Finn as they move out to a spooky and run-down farmhouse in the Irish wilderness. Adam is a conservationist/tree scientist who has been sent out there to assess the trees that are going to be cut down for some pending development, and as such, he’s not a big hit with the locals, who not only don’t want the forest that provides some of their livelihood cut down, but also don’t want the creepy beasties who live in said woods to get pissed off and start coming out to steal babies, which is apparently something they’re known to do. Particularly antagonistic is neighbor Colm Donnelly (Michael McElhatton), who repeatedly turns up at the family’s house to threaten them about the dangers of the creatures in the woods.
Skeptical Adam is having none of this mythological nonsense, but even he has to admit that there is something weird going on in those woods. Something flies through a window of the house one night, he sees hints of unidentified animals lurking among the trees, and the area seems to be pervaded with a strange black goo that, upon scientific scrutiny, resembles a fungus that can infiltrate the nervous system of the host organism and influence its behavior.
After Adam and Finn are attacked in their car by a creature which is never shown but leaves an alarmingly huge claw mark across the driver’s side door, Claire begins to think they had better leave, but naturally, Adam refuses to be intimidated by what he believes are malicious pranks engineered by the locals. But from then on, the situation gets worse and worse, as Adam is taken over by the fungus, and the baby Finn is taken by the creatures. This was actually my favorite part of the film, when the gooey monsters made off with the baby, Claire gave chase and rescued the baby from a swamp, then returned to the house only to have the partially possessed Adam insist that the baby wasn’t really Finn, but a changeling. There was a lot of delicious tension as the audience was left to wonder whether the baby really had been replaced or whether the fungus was making Adam see it that way. The changeling baby also looked spooky as hell.
All in all, I found this a fairly enjoyable but not super compelling flick. It had some great gore and practical effects (including lots of Fulci-esque eye trauma, always a plus), and a few scenes of effective creepiness, but I felt like I wasn’t involved enough with the characters to really be rooting for them, so the whole thing felt slightly flat for me. Also, while I liked the overall concept of it, I felt like it could have been given more of a distinctive flair based around the Irish folklore, as it really just kinda came off as a run-of-the-mill cabin-in-the-woods type movie, albeit one that was slightly elevated by the acting and the eerie setting and look of the monsters. Fun fact: the movie was originally pitched as Straw Dogs meets Pan’s Labyrinth, which…just…no. I can sorta see where they were heading with that, but still. Not even close. Actually, now that I think of it, if it had been more like Pan’s Labyrinth it probably would have ruled.
In the movie’s defense, though, I watched it when I was really, really tired, so my exhaustion might have clouded my judgment and made me more impatient and disengaged with it than I would normally be, so if an Irish fairy-tale take on The Evil Dead sounds like your pint of Guinness, then by all means, give it a spin. I liked it well enough, but it didn’t stand out a great deal; your mileage, of course, may vary.
Until next time, keep it creepy, my friends.
The Scare Salon 