Review: The Hollow

Three sisters (Stephanie Hunt, Sarah Dugdale, and Alisha Newton) find themselves on Shelter Island, which was plagued a century ago by a hellacious storm that wiped out the population. It appears that another storm is on the horizon, but that may not be the only destructive force tied to this place on this Halloween Eve. The storm also seems to bring with it a murderous supernatural being setting upon the townsfolk. Deborah Kara Unger plays the girls’ Aunt, who is a resident of Shelter Island.

 

The kind of horror film that is interesting whilst it’s keeping you guessing as to where it’s really headed. Once it starts to reveal itself, however, this 2015 SyFy movie from co-writer/director Sheldon Wilson (“Shallow Ground”, “Kaw”, and “Snowmageddon”) becomes much more formulaic and predictable. I liked some of this, but not all of it, and I’m pretty sure a whole bunch of the characters end up completely irrelevant, which is weird. The performances from the predominantly no-name cast are fairly average, too (Sarah Dugdale is especially poor). The only name actor is Deborah Kara Unger, who is hardly in the film and looks like she lost a fight with a bee. Or the whole hive. Still, it’s a better film than I was expecting going in and a watchable time-waster.

 

There’s a good, John Carpenter-esque music score from Hal Beckett (“They Wait”, and a whole lotta TV shows including “Voltron Force”), and the cinematography is really, really nice. There’s something a little “…And Soon the Darkness” about the scenery early on, that gives off eerie vibes. If it weren’t for the terrible CGI, you certainly wouldn’t pick this for a TV movie. Hell, the film isn’t terribly neutered on the violence front, either, for a TV movie. I really liked the set-up of the film, where we’re thrown right into the middle of something we’re not quite fully informed about. It’s not just the central premise that takes its time being explained, but the central trio of sisters have clearly been through something before we meet them. I liked all of that. I even liked the somewhat clichéd backstory for the title menace, it’s not exactly original, but it’s pretty interesting. However, once everyone hits the diner, this really does become too prosaic. After a reasonably enjoyable first 50 minutes, it’s all very stock-standard and ho-hum from then on. That still makes it better than “The Mist” in my book, though.

 

I liked the slow and unsettling set-up of this movie and some of the ideas at play. However, the performances and FX are poor, and the more we learn about the plot, the more predictable it becomes. Still, you’ll have seen a lot worse Halloween-themed films before. The screenplay is from the director and Rick Suvalle (who wrote several episodes of the notorious Pamela Anderson show “V.I.P.”).

 

Rating: C+