Hallow Road
It is 2 a.m. and Maddie (Rosamund Pike) has just received a panicked call from she and her husband Frank's (Matthew Rhys) daughter, who has accidentally hit a young woman. Maddie tells Alice (voice of Megan McDonnell) to call 999 immediately and that they will drive out to meet her on "Hallow Road."
Laura's Review: B-
Director Babak Anvari ("Under the Shadow") fashions William Gillies' first feature screenplay into a psychological thriller by way of family drama that, like "Locke" before it, takes place almost entirely within a vehicle. The film, which begins with a pan over what appears to be an abruptly left dinner, gradually metes out information about just what happened that evening, and how Maddie and Frank's contradictory parenting styles may have exacerbated it. But this is one of those films with an ambiguous ending where no theory as to what really happened is entirely satisfactory, instead a compelling acting exercise for Pike and Rhys in close quarters.
While Maddie had directed Alice to work over the phone with a professional to administer CPR, Frank thrusts Maddie into the role with 'Mom knows how to save lives. That's her job.' Their hysterical daughter sounds much younger than her twenty years would indicate, repeating 'she just ran into the road,' as Maddie maintains her cool, giving her a beat for compressions (the score by Lorne Balfe and Peter Adams is based on Depeche Mode's 'Behind the Wheel') until we hear a grotesque snap, the woman's chest caving. Frank immediately declares the girl dead, Maddie says it happens and the phone disconnects.
The drive, which appears to take place in real time (the timeline is contradictory, adding to the mystery), becomes increasingly tense as the couple discuss their daughter, whose own story keeps changing. We'll learn Alice is pregnant and her folks aren't thrilled with the Eastern European who is the father, an argument over dinner having caused her to steal their car and drive off into the woods, apparently to get high. Frank's sense of direction is at odds with their GPS, but when they reconnect with Alice she excitedly says she can see their headlights. The only problem is that they're still twenty-two miles away and just as they are directing their daughter to pull the victim off the road and lay low, another couple enters the picture and we can hear them offering to help get Alice out of the ditch her vehicle's stuck in. Then that conversation turns to talk of fairies and accusations of intoxication, Maddie interceding to ask them to leave as they're making her girl uncomfortable. Things escalate when the couple do leave, but stop short, peering into the woods where Alice's victim lies, then accusing Alice's parents of collusion before both they and Alice make different, startling observations.
Anvari, who created tension out of another fraught family dynamic while unnerving with suggestion and an unseen spirit in "Under the Shadow," mines similar, if less political, territory here, a dark, foggy forest road an eerie setting for strange happenings. But the film is unbalanced, Pike, whose character clearly desires to push Alice into responsible adulthood, overpowering Rhys, whose character coddles her. The strange and startling conclusion takes on a different tone when one realizes that the voices of the strangers we've been hearing over Alice's phone belong to Pike and Rhys as well, Pike the far more involved (and disturbing) of the two. "Hallow Road" has a familiar feel (think Richard Gere's strange drive in the superior "The Mothman Prophecies") until it doesn't and while some may find that mysterious conclusion something to turn over and over looking for a solution, others may find one too many things that just don't quite add up.
Robin's Review: C
XYZ Films releases "Harrow Road" as half of a Halloween double feature (with "Vincent Must Die") exclusively at AMC Theaters on 10/31/25.
