The Hallow (2015)

This creature feature is quite full of jumps and is an interesting premise. Without giving too much away, I agree with the other reviews - starts out pretty quick, boils over, then leaves the pot dry... You find yourself rooting for the actors and hoping that everything works out for them throughout the movie. There is a building of the character that really helps keep it moving. If you like creature features and some good campfire storytelling, you will enjoy this movie. There's not a huge budget but the team used what they did have very well. My biggest complaint is that there are a few moments towards the end that could have been shot better and a little less predictable. The end gets a little too "out there" for me to give it more stars but I was very satisfied. The acting is excellent and the scenery is right on target. The creatures are a bit pixellated but still, this is a great movie to watch at night with all the lights off and a fire or some candles going.

Fmovies: Regardless of how overused the basic plot, executed with very hit and miss success on film, is, 'The Hallow' did have a good deal of potential. The idea was actually a good one, the title was to the point and attention grabbing and Joseph Mawle is always worth watching. So expectations were hardly low for 'The Hallow', and actually did think this could be a decent film. Of course too there was apprehension, considering the standard of a lot of horror films seen recently not highly rated or divisively to negatively reviewed that turned out to be that bad.

A decent film 'The Hallow' turned out to be, and it is something of a relief to be saying this. Not a great film, with it running out of steam too soon and the quality set up so well before being lost. 'The Hallow' was quite good though for two thirds of the duration and while it didn't quite meet its potential it hardly wastes it either. Which pleased me having grown tired of the many potential wastes cropping up in my recent viewings and fearing somewhat that 'The Hallow' would fare the same.

Will start with the good things. 'The Hallow' doesn't look too bad visually, it's stylishly and atmospherically shot, has scenery that is pretty and atmospheric, has suitably eerie lighting, has editing that is cohesive and the effects at least didn't look shoe-string budget (certainly when compared to those from other films seen recently). It is hauntingly and not too intrusively scored and the direction has focus and momentum.

There is tension and suspense and a lot of genuine creepiness in particularly the middle act. That it is so in more than one way makes the execution fairly clever and fresh which is remarkable considering that the idea is hardly new. 'The Hallow' starts well but it's the middle act where it shines most where there are scenes that do unnerve. The creatures looked good and they did pose a formidable threat, would have liked to see them more though. The characters didn't bore or annoy me, while not exactly rich in character development there have been films that have done far worse regarding motivations and behaviours. Joseph Mawle commands the film well, standing out of an above average cast.

So it is unfortunate that the final act was such a significant step down in quality, to the extent that it was hard to believe it was the same film. The suspense and creepiness dissipates and confusion and silliness replaces them, both to an excessive degree. It becomes muddled, from too much being left vague or unexplained, and ridiculous.

Momentum sags badly particularly at this point, actually think that the pace was imperfect throughout but it was really only in some very uneventful stretches and some choppy storytelling that it did become bothersome. The dialogue is pretty weak, while the ending completely fails to make sense. Not many film endings recently have had me scratching my head, 'The Hallow' did that with me.

In conclusion, decent but let down by the inferior final third. 6/10 Bethany Cox

On the surface, The Hallow seemed like it would offer me something I always look for in horror - a unique experience. It has made a villain out of Irish folklore creatures, like Fairies and Banshees, which is not exactly a common subgenre. The film follows a man who looks for diseases on trees. He relocates to a small Irish village with his wife and baby in order to track a fungus growing in the surrounding forest. As soon as he does, his neighbor starts pestering him about staying out of the forest, because if you trespass on Fairy territory, they will come inside your house and steal your baby.

This movie attempts to give us a spin on monster movies by trying to weave science and fairytale together. Unfortunately, not enough attention was paid to how these two things are supposed to intertwine, and the result simply does not work - the science aspect of the film makes zero sense in the context of the fairytale one, and vice versa. So, instead of sticking to one of these two approaches, and developing it to a point where it works well, they half-assed both and we get nonsense that simply does not fit together into one whole. Not to mention that one of these two conflicting sides was lifted straight out of another UK horror film which is less than 10 years old, which executed it a million times better to boot.

I could have forgiven the ill-fitting (and, to be honest, way too basic) plot if the individual scenes took good advantage of the world the movie was trying to create. This leads me to the "mortal wound" of the film, the one that renders it creatively mute - its individual scenes. While the movie is not about a haunting, it follows every single "family moves into isolated haunted house" trope and then some. It was almost overwhelming. Seemingly crazy neighbor trying to warn family? Check. Exploring damp and dirty attic? Check. Baby monitor making weird noises? Check. Dog whimpering while chained outside? Check. Item dropped in the car by a driver who then crashes while looking for it on the floor instead of stopping the car or just waiting til they get home? Check. Creatures afraid of light, so you have to go outside and restart the generator cause there's no electricity? Check. Little blonde girl who looks like a zombie? Check. Every ounce of the movie was "horror 101", think Haunting in Connecticut or Amityville Remake or any other generic horror.

Even minor details which could have coloured an otherwise gray outing were foregone. The movie sets up fun "lore" as to what hurts the forest creatures and then just abandons it completely. So their skin burn if they touch iron metal? Well then this renders the ENTIRE last act of the film pointless, as the "conundrum" that the characters find themselves in would have been instantly solvable. But for the sake of having a third act at all, they just pretend that the characters forget what they learn instantly and never utilize the knowledge. Not a smart script here. The beginning also made me hopeful for the approach to the villainous creatures - they were never shown, with only shadows and silhouettes and body parts popping up here and there. This was successful in keeping them mysterious and should have been propagated to the second half. Instead, like some other recent horrors (Mama for example), the secretive tension is fully abandoned and by the end we get low- budget cartoonish CGI creatures in full glorious view every few seconds. Tension is simply incompatible with poorly animated fairies. The h

The Hallow fmovies. In Ireland, the botanist Adam (Joseph Mawle) moves with his wife Clare (Bojana Novakovic) and their baby son Finn to a remote house in the backwoods to study the local forest. He is warned to leave the place by his neighbor Colm Donnelly (Michael McElhatton), but Adam does not give attention to the man´s words. But soon he learns that there is something evil in the forest that wants Finn.

"The Hallow" is a horror film with great potential and promising story wasted by the terrible conclusion. The screenplay builds the tension perfectly, using few special effects. The climax is when Adam´s house is attacked by the evil creatures from the forest. But the writer did not know how to give explanations and conclude the film that becomes a lame mess. Somehow the conclusion gives the idea of being ecological but indeed it is terrible. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "A Maldição da Floresta" ("The Curse of the Forest")

The Hallow or The Woods as it is otherwise known is a UK/Irish collaboration. Its by no means a mainstream horror flick, yet, in spite of its humble credentials, its actually not half bad.

The scares in The Hallow come on on quite early and linger till "after" the closing credits. This should make the impatient viewer quite happy. There is a nominal amount of ratcheting up the tension in this film which is followed by an abundance of reasonably well executed creature scares. The creatures themselves tap into a supposedly Irish mythology about spirits and fairy like creatures that "assimilate" those who violate their forest haven.

There's a lot to like here. The setting is suitably creepy, the premise is well established and convincing. What's also refreshing is the couples very sane reaction when confronted with the creatures, that is, to run like hell.

Perhaps the only downside to this film, I felt, was its early introduction of the monsters. I believe this film would have been more effective with a more gradual application of tension and maybe another ten-fifteen minutes run time.

That said, The Hallow still hits all the right horror buttons and does so in a convincing and creative manner. Eight out of ten from me.

"Elves are terrific, the beget terror" -Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

Fairy tales were the original horror stories, so a return to the source is a refreshing departure from the Tinker Bells and Caspers of today. And the woodland creatures in The Hallows are creepy enough to fit the bill.

However, the oblivious, bumbling, pig-headed stupidity of the male lead will so frustrate you, you'll start to wish he'd die faster. His much-smarter-than-him wife is constantly calling his name like the teacher from Beuller as he completely ignores her and does yet another idiotic thing that gets him stabbed in the eye.

Further aggravation is to be had as the writers ignore traditional lore and begin making up their own rules, twisting the Fae until they more closely resemble contagious alien vampires. Freaky they are, accurate they are not. And then they start contradicting the guidelines they made up for themselves.

To conclude, the cool practical effects and few scary moments are not enough to save this ultimately irritating and dumb movie.