To keep a movie interesting, while shooting in a confined space for a lengthy period, is quite a challenge, said Amon Warmann in Empire – but Babak Anvari has pulled it off here. For the 80-minute run time of Hallow Road, his camera is focused mainly on two people in a car – and "it makes for a lean, mean, tension-filled ride".
Late at night, Maddie (Rosamund Pike) and Frank (Matthew Rhys) get a frantic phone call from their 18-year-old daughter Alice; having driven off in a rage following a family row, she has accidentally hit a pedestrian on a dark forest road – "and she has no idea what to do next". The parents jump in their own car and, as they race off to find her, they discuss "what the future looks like" for Alice and them, and how they might get out of it. Meanwhile, the audience is drip-fed revelations about the tensions that led them to this point.
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