A taut and twisting thriller, fueled by a parent’s worst nightmare.
There’s something admirable about a film that unfolds in a single location. Confines usually serve as a pressure cooker for performances as well as the creative aspects of putting a film together. One ingredient can throw things off, but if you get the recipe right, it makes for something really special. This is just the case with Hallow Road, a film predominantly set inside a car as a mother and father head out into the countryside to help their daughter deal with a horrific incident.
A wordless opening gives you the bare bones of what sets this nightmare in motion. The camera panning across an abandoned dining table showing unfinished food, an unused plate, a broken glass, and an empty bottle of wine. A phone call awakens Maddie (Rosamund Pike) and Frank (Matthew Rhys) hours after their daughter Alice (Megan McDonnell) ran off after an argument. A frantic conversation later and the pair hit the road to respond to their daughter’s plea for help. She’s alone, miles away on a dark country road in the dead of night, and she has hit a young girl with her car.
It’s the longest journey the pair will ever take, and director Babak Anvari (Under the Shadow) squeezes tension out of every mile and every minute. The worst phone call imaginable would be to hear of your child’s death, but hearing they are tied up in a situation that looks set to irrevocably destroy their life comes a close second. That’s what they’re reckoning with, and the journey offers up this pressure cooker scenario that breaks down barriers and causes truths to come bubbling to the surface. Some of these revolve around marital strife and personal secrets, but inevitably they come back to differing approaches to the situation and their own parenting styles.
Frank is a devoted father looking to protect his girl in whatever way he can. Maddie has a firmer hand. As a paramedic she is all too aware that these tragic events could haunt Alice for the rest of her life and so urges her to do the right thing each time a path opens up in front of them. Some of these conversations involve the three members of the family, some just between the parents thanks to the mute on the speakerphone. It becomes apparent that Alice has issues with substance abuse and is currently making some questionable life choices. Finding that Alice might have not actually called 999 after the accident opens up another moral quandary, positioning Hallow Road as a thriller that examines the complexities of parent-parent and parent-child relationships as this couple questions whether they could have done more to avert this tragic event in the first place.
Hallow Road is one of those films where going in blind is best. You don’t need to be a parent to sympathize but it surely helps. The film was shot over 17 days and an early 55 minute single-take helped inform refinement of the assured script from William Gilles. The basic premise alone might sustain things but the script isn’t afraid to throw a couple of curveballs, notably an unseen but heard couple who stop to help Abigail, setting in motion a darker mystery that informs the rest of the film. The energy and tension isn’t just sustained, it ramps up throughout, respite coming from some delicately placed lulls and just a smidge of levity (a comment about Alice’s boyfriend’s nationality being the standout).
Director Babak Anvari combines with cinematographer Kit Fraser to craft a feature that is both immersive and a technical flex. A changing array of lenses play with depth of field, while closeups, camera flips and shots of the satnav add further impetus. Reflections of turn signals urge the pair to turn back and light serves as a spotlight and indicator of conflict. A discordant and perturbing score from Lorne Balfe and Peter Adams rounds out the shaking of the senses.
For all its technical mastery the film does rest on the two leads, and they do not disappoint. Rhys and Pike deliver expressive and tortured performances and break through the confines of the car seat with nervous movement, tight grips of the wheel. The vocal performance of McDonnell is also a crucial component, one that triggers with her anguished and broken tone.
At just over 80 minutes, there’s not an ounce of fat in Anvari’s latest. A taut and tense thriller that takes unpredictable paths and delivers a gut punch of an ending, one that sparks reflection on everything that came before. Hallow Road is a white knuckle ride that pushes us to ask how far we would go to protect our child, as well as ourselves.
