The Horror Show
The Hallow
by Corin Hardy
Using too much “zombie fungus,” first-time director and visual artist Corin Hardy delivers a horror tale about the sinister Irish countryside with mesmerizing zeal. The generic horror-in-the-woods story unravels once again before our eyes in a flawed yet entertaining manner.
Set deep in a rural Irish community, The Hallow follows Adam (Joseph Mawle), a London-based conservationist, who moves to the area with his wife Claire and their infant son Finn. Their new home is located near an eerie forest and foolishly the family ignores the locals’ warnings about the woods’ malevolent nature. The Irish horror fairytales are not enough to scare the couple away, who naively decide to remove the iron bars from the windows, as if they were placed there for no reason.
Strike one for Adam and Claire.
As the story progresses and the strikes keep going, the two lead protagonists will find themselves hunted by ghastly-looking creatures and their battle for survival is filled with black goo and fungus.
The overwrought tale of the horror-in-the-woods, found innumerable times within the genre, fails to convince plot-wise but is visually striking. Hardy’s stylish yet imitative release has a highly satisfying preoccupation with make-up effects, but the plotting gets a bit lost amid the black goo. The performances are far from captivating, but fortunately, in the end, the human characters don’t matter nearly as much as the hellish beings that they encounter.
Final verdict? The Hallow is a fun-to-watch flick that can certainly entertain mainstream audiences, but is redundant for hardcore horror fans. However, it is a refreshing version of the horror-in-the-woods, which - let’s face it - is a genre in itself.
Maria Kriva, HMS
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