Film Talk: Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys take a dark path in Hallow Road

Following the aforementioned creepy tropes, Hallow Road, directed by Babak Anvari – also at the helm for 2019’s Wounds starring Armie Hammer and Dakota Johnson – slowly unfolds into darkest horror. 

Maddie (Rosamund Pike) and Frank (Matthew Rhys) are tested to the limit after their daughter Alice (Megan McDonnell) sobbingly confesses to having run over a girl and begs for their help. They race towards the scene of the crime to support her, but do not know that something very sinister awaits them.

“When I read it, I was immediately hooked,” says Anvari of writer William Gillies’ script for Hallow Road. “And I think the challenge of it being 90 per cent in the contained space of a car, as a filmmaker, was like: Wow.

“I always say filmmakers are masochists, so the tougher the challenge, the better for us. So I was immediately like: ‘Well, there’s a lot of tension, but how to maintain that tension within such a contained space?’ I think that was the initial hook. And then, of course, the dynamic between the characters and this family, it was just so meaty for me.”

The horror of Hallow Road is largely psychological. We, as the audience, share the experience with Maddie and Frank in that we aren’t shown what’s going on with Alice, the state of the girl’s body as it lies crumpled in the road, or the devastation of the accident: for us, like for them, it’s left entirely to our macabre imaginations. “I think that it just taps into something for me that was very cinematic, because cinema is basically like a dream or like an imagination…” says the Iranian-born director. “All they have, these two parents, is their anxiety and imagination…”

Let’s take a closer look...

HALLOW ROAD (UK 15/ROI 15A, 80 mins) ***

Released: May 16 (UK & Ireland, selected cinemas)

With his tonally ambitious fourth feature, Bafta-winning British Iranian filmmaker Babak Anvari tests how far parents will go to protective their offspring from the calamitous but necessary consequences of their reckless actions.

Shot predominantly as a two-hander between Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys as characters speed through the night to the scene of a road accident, Hallow Road narrowly avoids becoming a car crash itself when screenwriter William Gillies performs a handbrake narrative U-turn in the film’s disorienting final stretch.

This genre gear shift, teased by cinematographer Kit Fraser in the opening montage, works surprisingly well, galvanised by wholly committed on-screen performances from the two leads and heart-tugging vocals from Megan McDonnell on the other end of a telephone call that plays out in agonising real-time.

The central conceit is strongly reminiscent of Steven Knight’s 2013 thriller Locke starring Tom Hardy, and Anvari’s picture gnaws hungrily on the claustrophobia inside a vehicle enveloped by the darkness of the witching hour.

Stylistic flourishes, such as projecting data from the sat nav onto Pike’s face during a pivotal telephone exchange, generate bursts of kinetic energy while characters are seat-belted in submission.

Exterior visuals are noticeably in conflict with the movement of the car’s steering wheel during one scene but otherwise, Hallow Road sustains the illusion of relentless onward travel into the night, bookmarked by a terrifically effective interlude bathed in the blood red of a traffic signal.

Shortly after 2am, paramedic Maddie Finch (Pike) receives a panicked telephone call from her 18-year-old daughter Alice (McDonnell), who hasn’t returned home after a heated argument that ended with the teenager storming out of the house and stealing her father’s car.

Through whimpers and sobs, Maddie learns that her daughter has been involved in a hit-and-run on Hallow Road and a young girl now lies motionless on the asphalt.

Maddie jumps into her car with husband Frank (Rhys) in the driver’s seat and they race to the scene while the mother coaches Alice through CPR.

Heart-stopping seconds pass and Frank eventually orders his daughter to stop performing chest compressions and get back into the car.

“I have to put our daughter first,” he snarls at Maddie, whose medical training instinctively prioritises the wellbeing of the patient.

Tension escalates as Frank and Maddie find themselves on opposite sides of a moral dilemma about protecting Alice from police scrutiny.

Hallow Road milks suspense from a simple premise that veers into the realms of the fantastical and otherworldly. Pike and Rhys are expertly matched and they relish a bruising power struggle between conflicted parents.

Clip a child’s wings as they attempt to fly the nest and they will fall. With a sickening thud.

FINAL DESTINATION BLOODLINES (UK 15/ROI 16, 110 mins) ***

Released: May 14 (UK & Ireland)

Dedicated to the memory of actor Tony Todd, who has portrayed soothsaying mortician William Bludworth in the Final Destination films since the ghoulish franchise took flight 25 years ago, a belated sixth chapter directed by Adam Stein and Zach Lipovsky goes back to the beginning to expose the chain of events that set the deadly curse in motion.

Cue a nerve-jangling set piece inside a 494-feet tall restaurant tower, which completed construction months ahead of deadline and is clearly signposted as a deathtrap before the gore flows freely in Guy Busick and Lori Evans Taylor’s squelchy screenplay.

Johnny Cash’s Ring Of Fire trills from a parking valet’s transistor radio and a totemic bad penny is plucked from a watery grave, foreshadowing the domino rally of devastation, evisceration and incineration that has become the series’ trademark.

Like its predecessors, Final Destination Bloodlines gleefully encourages us to predict how each character will meet their grisly demise from a dizzying array of potentially lethal props littered around each location.

A summer barbecue in a residential back garden and a bout of after-hours inkwork in a tattoo and body-piercing parlour offer seemingly limitless options.

Stein and Lipovsky’s picture is more of the same, replete with visual callbacks to previous stomach-churning instalments.

High-achieving college student Stefanie Reyes (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) is plagued by violent nightmares of her grandmother Iris (Brec Bassinger) more than 50 years ago and a disaster at the Skyview Tower where Iris’s sweetheart Paul (Max Lloyd-Jones) proposed on bended knee.

Unable to sleep or focus during lectures, Stefanie is placed on academic probation and risks losing her scholarship.

In desperation, she travels home to reconnect with her father Marty (Tinpo Lee) and younger brother Charlie (Teo Briones) and learn more about her family’s past.

Stefanie ignores the pleas of her uncle Howard (Alex Zahara) and aunt Brenda (April Telek) and tracks down Iris (Gabrielle Rose) to a safehouse in the wilderness.

The sleep-deprived teenager learns about the tragic curse – “Death is coming for our family” – and attempts to warn incredulous kin that the Grim Reaper will pay them a visit in chronological order by birth.

Thus, cousins Erik (Richard Harmon), Julia (Anna Lore) and Bobby (Owen Patrick Joyner) nervously look over their shoulder while Stefanie tracks down the one person who has successfully evaded the jinx.

Final Destination Bloodlines stitches a flimsy narrative thread through the series timeline to connect the premonitions of an exploding airplane, motorway pile-up, derailed rollercoaster, race car circuit crash and bridge collapse.

Special effects and make up don’t stint on the ruptured flesh and innards.

Characters’ ham-fisted attempt to cheat the prophecy inside a hospital – surely the safest refuge – elicits the biggest whoops and cheers.

Within staggering distance of a mortuary slab, the carnage is to die for.

HURRY UP TOMORROW (UK 15/ROI 15A, 105 mins) ***

Released: May 16 (UK & Ireland, selected cinemas)

Abel Tesfaye, better known as Grammy Award-winning musician The Weeknd, co-writes and stars in a feature-length psychological thriller, which serves as a companion piece to his sixth studio album released in January.

Singer-songwriter Abel is in the vice-like grip of insomnia and unable to get the sleep he needs to replenish his creative juices. Teetering on the brink of a nervous breakdown, he encounters the beguiling Anima (Jenna Ortega) and she slowly unravels the core of his existence. In emotional freefall, Abel performs for screaming fans on tour as he battles his demons and seeks to banish self-doubt with the help of Lee (Barry Keoghan).

THE MARCHING BAND (UK 15/ROI 12A, 103 mins) ***

Released: May 16 (UK & Ireland, selected cinemas)

Brotherly love results in sweet harmony in a crowd-pleasing comedy drama directed by Emmanuel Courcol, which has been one of France’s big box office hits of the past 12 months.

Lille Symphony Orchestra’s internationally renowned conductor Thibaut Desormeaux (Benjamin Lavernhe) is diagnosed with leukaemia and requires a bone marrow transplant.

Adopted when he was young, Thibaut discovers he has a younger brother who might be a potential donor match.