HALLOW ROAD (2025)

Studio:   Universal Pictures
Director: Babak Anvari
Writer:   William Gillies
Producer: Ian Henry, Lucan Toh, Richard Bolger, Nate Bolotin, Aram Tertzakian
Stars:    Rosamund Pike, Matthew Rhys, Megan McDonnell

Review Score:

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Summary:

Concerned parents enter a surreal nightmare while driving to meet their daughter at the scene of a tragic accident.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Following an emotional argument over the revelation she is unexpectedly pregnant, 18-year-old Alice Finch takes her father Frank’s car and drives off. After 2am, Alice tearfully tells her mother Maddie over the phone that she hit a young woman the same age as her who supposedly ran in front of her vehicle.

Frank and Maddie immediately set out in Maddie’s car to drive to their daughter on Hallow Road in Ashfolk Forest. On the way, Maddie, a paramedic, coaches Alice through performing CPR on the girl while waiting for paramedics Alice claims she called. Frank and Maddie hear Alice crack one of the girl’s ribs while trying to resuscitate her. Believing the injured girl to be dead, Frank convinces Alice to leave the body and wait in her car for the ambulance, which upsets Maddie, who did not want to give up on reviving the victim. Alice abruptly ends the call.

After more arguing, Frank and Maddie reconnect with their daughter. Alice explains that she did not want to go home to face her parents again or go tell her boyfriend about the pregnancy, so she drove to the woods to clear her head. Suspicious of Alice’s story, Maddie gets her daughter to admit she was high when she struck the girl, and now her car is stuck in a ditch. Alice also admits she never called 999 for help.

Maddie insists on contacting the police before it is too late. Fearful of their daughter being arrested, Frank concocts a plot to take the blame for Alice since he is sober and can make it look like he was driving his own car. Maddie expresses worry that the police will expose the lie and Alice will be emotionally haunted by making matters worse. More arguments ensue as Alice becomes despondent, Maddie discourages Alice from sacrificing her future to start a family, and Frank encourages Alice to focus on university.

Frank starts driving toward Hallow Road in a different direction than what Maddie’s GPS shows. Frank and Maddie also continue arguing over trouble in their relationship.

Alice tells her parents she can see headlights approaching. Over Maddie’s objections, Frank frantically instructs Alice to drag the body off the road to hide it from discovery. When Alice moves the body to the trees, strange sounds are heard. In shock, Alice screams that the dead girl is changing shape.

A kind woman and her husband, who strangely have the same voices as Maddie and Frank, stop to offer help to Alice. Following Frank’s instructions, Alice attempts to talk the couple into leaving, but the woman only becomes more assertive and accusatory. The woman also mentions how those woods are sacred grounds full of lore, and pagans used to honor faeries there.

Maddie asks to speak directly to the woman. Claiming she is making Alice uncomfortable with her questions, Maddie seemingly convinces the woman to leave, but she instead searches the nearby woods and ends up finding the girl.

Before Maddie can call the police, she and Frank hear Alice attempting to drive out of the ditch. They then hear Alice scream as her window is smashed. The call cuts off.

The woman calls back on Alice’s phone. In a condescending tone, the woman tells Maddie and Frank she knows all about their plan to cover up what Alice did. The woman also claims the girl Alice hit is still alive, and her husband took her away.

Maddie demands to know what the woman wants. The woman replies, “a better story.” Appealing to her as a parent, Frank takes the blame by confessing it was his idea to hide the body, although he swears they did not plan to flee. The woman claims she and her husband understand because they were once in a similar situation and have been atoning for it ever since.

Maddie confesses she quit her paramedic job because of a misjudgment that led to a woman’s death. Although her mistake was considered understandable, Maddie still resigned.

Reiterating that she saw her face on the girl’s body, Alice decides to take responsibility for what happened. Alice hangs up the phone to tell the woman she wants to do the right thing.

Frank and Maddie arrive at the accident scene to find Alice’s car abandoned and no one around. While Frank goes to inspect the body of the girl lying nearby, Maddie calls the police. Maddie immediately drops the phone when Frank returns to tearfully report the dead girl is Alice.

Reminding her husband how Alice said the girl’s face changed, Maddie tries convincing herself that the dead girl isn’t Alice. Maddie calls Alice’s phone. Alice seemingly answers by saying she is sick and still in the forest.

Frank and Maddie hear the woman grow increasingly accusatory toward Alice. The woman taunts that Alice knew the girl was dead when she hit her, and Alice also knew it would be the end of her own life and promising future because nothing would be the same ever again.

The woman goes on to say that she and her husband are Alice’s parents now, just like they became parents of the child before Alice and the child before that. The woman coldly tells Alice she deserves to be where she is. She then taunts Frank and Maddie by saying a parent’s base instinct is to believe they can shield their child from consequences, so they make up stories to spare them the cost. Finally, the woman asks how far Alice’s parents will continue driving on an endless road?

Frank and Maddie are forced to stop their search for Alice when they come to a cop car parked in the road. The woman says, “it is too late.” When Alice reveals she is pregnant, the woman adds, “then we will rectify your child too.” Frank and Maddie hear horrible screams before the call cuts off.

Frank and Maddie sit sullenly in their vehicle as a police officer approaches them. In the morning, authorities continue processing the accident scene while Frank and Maddie recover in an ambulance. Discussing what the parents claim happened to Alice, two officers dismiss their story as delusional trauma.

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Review:

“Hallow Road” sets up its story, and also its tone, without using words. For almost a full minute, the film’s first shot pans across fallen leaves on muddy ground, stopping on a single shoe spattered with blood as an ominous clue that something went horribly wrong.

After the title card, a ticking clock identifies the time as 2:10am. A slow zoom shows a table with two used plates and one clean one, suggesting someone was expected for dinner but did not partake. Utensils rest where they last landed in unfinished servings of food, further indicating this meal ended abruptly. From broken glass swept into a dustpan, it’s safe to assume a heated confrontation was the cause.

The camera’s next choices for cutaways include a backpack on the floor, a keycard identifying a man named Frank, another one identifying his wife Maddie as a paramedic, and her prescription medication to inform us she’s taking an antidepressant. Family photos introduce a third person: the couple’s 18-year-old daughter Alice.

Breaking the silence are the signature bleeps of a smoke detector asking for a fresh battery. Roused from slumber, Maddie obliges after finding her husband asleep at a desk.

This steady diet of breadcrumb exposition becomes a meatier morsel when Alice interrupts with a phone call. Resolving the argument that led to the distraught girl taking her dad’s car to flee the family’s house will have to wait. Through panicked pleas, Alice explains how she hit a girl who supposedly ran into the dark forest road where she was driving. Frank springs into action by starting his wife’s car. Maddie talks Alice through performing CPR on the girl.

Ten minutes since the bloody shoe first appeared and “Hallow Road” is finally underway, with a surreal nightmare unfolding over the phone for Frank and Maddie as they frantically race to their daughter’s accident scene. While Frank and Maddie get set for a harrowing night, “Harrow Road’s” audience now knows to get set for the slow burn these same ten minutes of drip-fed details have clearly conditioned them for.

Dressed to look like a movie, “Hallow Road” structures its script like a two-person, single-location chamber play readymade for a 30-seat theater. As a psychological study of a marriage in crisis further tested through terrifying trauma, “Hallow Road” doesn’t have stakes high enough to warrant more cinematic style than the minimalist aesthetic it already has. It’s just that since it runs a quick 72 minutes when credits aren’t included, the film lasts only a little longer than an average drama series episode on TV, which feels like a more appropriate medium for the production’s frugal presentation than a big screen does.

Although its mystery has moments of engaging intrigue, the lack of an unforeseen twist prevents the measured buildup from reaching a gut-punch payoff. Normally, recapping context clues might create inadvertent spoilers, except it’s difficult to picture anyone being genuinely caught off-guard by the revelation of what’s really going on. “Hallow Road” practically gives its poorly kept secret away in Alice’s earliest phone calls, when she mentions that the girl she hit is “around (her) age,” then later adds that they look alike. “Unpredictable” is not a word that describes this movie. Regarding the argument that ignited this situation, think of the biggest reason why an 18-year-old girl might have a massive falling out with her parents; your first guess is correct.

Unsurprising on a different level, compelling performances keep “Hallow Road” swimming as strongly as possible against the strong current of a drowsy pace. Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys are evenly matched in ability to power the battery of Maddie and Frank. Their portrayals of an unraveling mother and an overprotective father are good, not great, yet they take no personal blame in limiting the elevation of their acting. Basic characterizations are tethered to material that isn’t earthshattering to begin with, so there’s no helium for them to reach greater heights.

The film isn’t concerned with traditional tenets of supernatural horror, which is why the explanation for events doesn’t get deeper than one spurt of cryptic dialogue mentioning sacred woods, pagan worship, and faeries. “Hallow Road” essentially plays out like a Grimm’s ghost story, or an EC Comics morality fable whose ethereal eeriness doesn’t come from ghouls, zombies, or cackling creatures. Those notions might be too dull or too disappointing for fright fanatics to find much worth sinking their teeth into. But “Hallow Road” shows exactly where it’s headed on all fronts from the outset, leaving little room to accuse the movie of not delivering exactly what it says it will.

Review Score: 55

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