Minimalist, two-hander, practically single-location horror-thrillers that unfold in actual time can — and may — take any variety of formal and narrative liberties, but it surely’s essential that they use them to take us all the way in which to the place they keep in mind. The most recent movie by British-Iranian director Babak Anvari (“Below the Shadow”) solely will get us midway earlier than it will get misplaced in a fog of its personal elevated concepts.
The story of two out-of-sync mother and father flying down a nighttime motorway to avoid wasting their daughter after she’s crashed into a lady whereas driving by means of an eerie forest, “Hallow Street” makes for a extremely tense watch that may have audiences flocking to the closest dive bar or social media platform to map out easter eggs and froth over grand semiotics. Sadly, the movie by no means transcends its tone of ever-present and palpable hazard to develop into a extra satisfying character piece.
A level of take away is rooted within the movie’s very conceit and execution. It begins with Anvari and DP Package Fraser’s option to pointedly swap from 16mm movie to digital early on. “Hallow Street” opens with luscious pictures by means of a nether forest of spirit whispers, after which a pan to a lady’s shoe deserted within the moss. The aftermath of a folkloristic horror? From there, nonetheless on celluloid, we lower inside a warmly lit, center class residence, because the digital camera consciously swoops by means of clues: an unfinished meal, half-consumed glasses of wine, carved pumpkins (ah, it’s Halloween), and crushed glass swept to the nook. Drama!
Maddie (Rosamund Pike), asleep within the bed room, and Frank (Matthew Rhys), handed out on the desk of his residence workplace, are awoken by a frantic name from their teenage daughter Alice (Megan McDonnell), whom we all know the entire film solely by her voice on the cellphone and a sweet-enough profile pic. We piece collectively that Maddie and Frank had an argument with Alice, after which she fled together with his automotive and is now panicking after the weird accident. They rush to her help, and as quickly as Frank enters the tackle on Pike’s automotive’s GPS—“Hallow Street”— the body, like heartless clockwork, rivets to digital.
The following hour takes place solely contained in the automotive, with Rhys and Pike swinging between barked orders, painful pleas, petrified silences, and a few really bone-crunching SFX. Trapped alongside these two positive actors, we develop into extra acquainted with Maddie and Frank as characters. Maddie is a paramedic, and thus a detector. She detects pulses, children beneath the affect, and the accuracy of the timing of chest pumps, which she instructions poor, excessive Alice to carry out on the woman she ran over within the woods.
However regardless of being the extra rational and righteous of the mother and father, Maddie has a foul case of overestimating the relevance of her vocational coaching to the calamity at hand. That’s what Frank thinks, at the least. He’s his spouse’s reverse in each manner: the emotional, sacrificial mum or dad, a temperament which inserts like a foul swimsuit on his bland persona as a advertising and marketing director. It’s a sartorial misstep that Rhys wears as greatest he can, the actor’s efficiency a thousand miles faraway from his charming, oxidized tackle Perry Mason.
Issues solely develop into much less intriguing because the night time wears on, as unfastened plot threads combine with predictable secrets and techniques that these characters have been holding onto since lengthy earlier than the movie started. For screenwriter William Gillies, the attract of immediacy seems to absolve the absence of historical past. Anvari is prepared to work with that, as he leans into the uncertainty and dizzying suspension fueled by the movie’s story.
On paper, Anvari’s slew of improvements ought to work. Little to no foley of the automotive, few to no anchoring pictures of the street from contained in the automotive, and a purposely simplistic GPS—suggesting tongue in cheek that the mother and father are in uncharted territory—conspire to maintain us on edge. Fraser in flip distracts us by making the inside of the automotive a chamber piece of natural lighting (not complaining, with this forged), at the least till the half manner mark when the story careens into its alter-ego, remodeling from thriller to horror. On this twilight zone, excessive closeups of Maddie and Frank’s terrified eyes, the sudden depiction of the street in mushy focus, and the forest’s AI-like rendering are downright disorienting.
And but, we don’t really feel as terrified for the characters as Anvari and Gillies estimate we’ll. A basic disconnect persists between the elevated therapy of the style combine and the filmmakers’ means to generate a grounded, real concern for Frank, Maddie, and particularly Alice.
The upside of “Hallow Street’s” pure style exercise is that Anvari finds the sunny facet up of this dreadfully nocturnal nowhere exurb. The draw back is that he additionally denies us the pleasures of taking part in with folkloristic horror tropes. When a seeming Good Samaritan character exhibits up—like Alice, heard solely by means of the cellphone— our hackles are immediately raised — how can a voice so saccharine conjure a lot fright? Earlier than we are able to actually chew on her references to the piper or undertaking different grim fairy tales onto Alice’s destiny, Gillies and Anvari take the experience into fifth gear, a meta mode, with characters spouting traces comparable to “I would like a greater story,” “I requested all of the improper questions,” and “Am I making you uncomfortable?” Then, in the long run credit, the filmmakers wholly exit the simulacrum with a doozy of a reveal.
The difficulty is that it’s actually laborious to be each modernist and postmodernist in equal measure, and it feels disingenuous to have occasions confer with actual feelings when you find yourself additionally so fast to flout the veil. Doing so undoes the intentionality behind Anvari’s decisions and leaves the cinematic textual content too open-ended. I felt trapped for too lengthy within the film’s uncanny valleys, my thoughts accelerating to the formal and narrative virtues of different, extra profitable movies that overlap with this one: Coraline and the concrete symbolism of the Different Mom; the centered existential disaster of Locke‘s protagonist; and even the extra earnest try of one other SXSW countless street movie, “It Ends” to reinvent the style wheels. If solely this one didn’t really feel as vacant lengthy after it’s arrived at its vacation spot.
Grade: C+
“Hallow Street” premiered at SXSW 2025. It’s presently in search of U.S. distribution.
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