Thursday, October 10, 2013

Hollow




(2012)  **

A year following the death of her grandfather, good girl Emma visits his remote home located next to the ruins of an old church and spooky graveyard in Dunwich, Suffolk.  Joining Emma is her fiancé, her jerk ex-boyfriend and his new loose girlfriend.  Emma’s fiancé decides to document the weekend sojourn with his nifty video camera.  Upon arriving Emma points out an ancient, creepy tree and reveals a local legend her grandfather once told her about couples hanging themselves from its limbs. 

Grandpa’s house turns out to be a wonderful, sprawling dwelling without any electricity.  When the sun sets candles are lit, booze is consumed and coke is snorted.  Once inhibitions have been removed the quartet begins sniping at one another and painful memories are revealed.  Meanwhile odd things begin to occur…




Hollow is apparently Britain’s answer to The Blair Witch Project and compared to Hollow, The Blair Witch is a masterpiece.  Although I’m a sucker for the ‘found footage’ genre, Hollow is an absolute endurance test to get through.  For the first hour of this 90 minute film nothing happens, nope, nothing.  The characters start out crabbing and chit-chatting but become increasingly unlikable as their complicated romantic histories are slowly revealed.  More than once someone’s feelings get hurt and their solution is to run off into the creepy graveyard at night.  Every time this happened I thought, “Okay, now some bad stuff is going to happen”.  Nope.  The other characters would go into the graveyard to retrieve their friend and return to the house (what!?).  When the bad stuff does begin to happen it’s really not all that bad.  The tree is pretty cool though.

7 comments:

AC said...

sounds more like a sleeping pill than a horror movie.

Johnny Sweatpants said...

I do love me some big creepy trees but not enough to watch a mediocre movie featuring one.

Trevor said...

I was thinking about this one too. Nevermind. Good intro. I feel like I understand the whole movie now. Is it worth it to just fast forward to 65 minutes and then start watching?

Octopunk said...

People get upset and wander out into a legend-shrouded cemetary at night and then later they just come back? Those are some lazy ghosts or witches or tree trolls or whatever.

JPX said...

Trevor, it's not worth it! Everything that occurs happens off-screen - think Blair Witch but lamer.

Octo, I completely agree! The setting was very cool but it wasn't used effectively.

Catfreeek said...

That tree is pretty awesome. Mental note: Put this on when you can't sleep.

DKC said...

Nothing is worse then the failure to use a creepy setting to it's fullest effect. Shame!!

Malevolent

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