Hallow Road (2025)

Hallow Road stars Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys who are Maddie and Frank who are woken up in the middle of the night by their daughter Alice (Megan McDonnell) who has been in an accident and the movie is basically Maddie and Frank driving to the location talking to their daughter and it all takes place in the car. 

The film is basically led by Pike and Rhys. Maddie wants to call the police and use a sympathetic police officer to help their daughter and yet Frank wants to take the blame and this leads to conflict between the two. One of the reasons why the film works in the way that it does is that these two work well together despite their characters being polar opposite. The fact that the film takes place inside the car apart from the opening couple of minutes and the final few minutes and still manages to be entertaining and gripping shows how good the performances were and also the writing. Credit has to go to director Batak Anvari for keeping things ticking along and never letting the film feel like there was a lull in the action. It was constantly tense as we are trying to find out what has happened and just when things seem to be reaching a logical conclusion we hear a new voice which a woman who has seemingly just stumbled across Alice who has at this point moved the body and starts acting all sinister to Alice. This is really when the tension gets turned up to maximum because Maddie and Frank are very close and yet this voice basically has control over the entire situation and as they get further into the woods the atmosphere feels slightly off and you just know that it wasn't going to end with Alice being found. I am quite impressed how two voices managed to get me so involved in what is going on. 

If I had an issue with the film, it's the ending. The idea as I understand it is that the body found that Alice said was the person she hit is supposed to be Alice but the parents can’t accept this as they have been talking to Alice. I thought the creepy build up was slightly ruined by the idea that there are magical things going on. There is apparently an end credit scene which I missed cause I didn’t realise I was watching a Marvel film.

Overall I thought this was very well done and might require a second viewing so I can see the things I missed and hope that the ending works for me. Worth seeing if you get the chance and definitely one that would be ideal at Halloween.