Hollow

I saw an ad for this movie on a horror site. Came to IMDb and saw that it had a 6.5 rating on here. Reviews say how amazing it is. I watched it. It was awful. I assumed I was just trolled by fake reviews. I was. If you look at the positive member reviews, click on the name of the person who posted it. This is the one and only movie those "members" ever reviewed. Didn't even attempt to cover their tracks by throwing in some other random reviews. Nope, just the one.

The people behind this movie are trolls and their movie is awful. In fairness, it's my own fault for not doing making sure the reviews were legit. Lesson learned.

I remember seeing this movie at the Fantasia Festival in Montreal. I am a big fan of those Found Footage movies... really I do love them, but That movie... boring... bland... forgettable at most.

I kinda felt bad in the theater... the producer and director where present and were happy to present us the movie in exclusivity... people seemed happy and all in the room... but by the time the movie ended, it was dead silence... the movie crew were standing in front of the screen, waiting for perhaps some cheering or even question from the viewers... but Nothing... everyone in the theater were bummed and leaving silently. Producers were standing still in an awkward silent room with people trying to flee. Yeah the movie is that bad.

In my ten years of IMDb activity, I have never come across a movie with such laughably fake 'reviews'. I perfectly understand how tastes vary and that one person's hidden gem can be another's stinking turd. But 'Hollow' is, by any objective criteria, pure garbage. The favorable reviews posted here can not possibly be genuine. The movie could have been enjoyably average: a mildly interesting idea squeezed into the found-footage formula of "The Blair Witch Project". It's problem lies squarely with its characters. In real life, panicky people annoy me. You know the type I mean: blubbering and hyperventilating and getting all mindlessly hysterical. I just want to slap them and tell them to grow a spine. My annoyance becomes outright anger when such people are made the protagonists of a movie. And don't tell me it's "realism": millions of people the world over deal with crazy s**t every year without curling up in a ball and begging for death. Every character in "Hollow" runs around screaming and crying, whining and bickering, doing absolutely nothing to help themselves or each other. Every one of them is unbelievably selfish and displays the intelligence of a mildly retarded pre-schooler. They're just so pathetic it's impossible to feel any sympathy, still less empathy. I'm at a loss to understand why movies are made about such people. Why am I supposed to care what happens to them? Why should I bother watching? Complete waste of time: very tough to sit through.

This movie is part of the Found Footage genre, which if you've been keeping up with my posts, I'm a huge fan of. Unfortunately, this one didn't make my cut of favorites. The story is about two couples that go on holiday to the English countryside and uncover an ancient evil… wait for it… TREE.

There were times where I thought it was going to get good, but it ended up never going anywhere. By the end of the movie, I got that feeling where I wanted all the characters to hurry up and die. The outcome of the end of the movie literally made me shout out "Is that it?" Found footage films are almost always hit & miss in terms of being entertaining/scary. This one is definitely a MISS in my opinion.

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HOLLOW is the British version of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, or should I say the British rip-off because this is a complete riff on that classic film. Of course, it's nowhere near as good, but fans of the found footage genre might enjoy a few spooky moments here and there.

For the most part, though, this is a missed opportunity. This film was especially interesting to me given that I was involved in my own BLAIR WITCH-style spoof back in the day and I had a lot of fun making it. Plus the locations are dear to my heart, and this was filmed just up the road from me. What a shame that for 90% of the running time the viewer is stuck with a quartet of detestable characters who alternate between boring and stupid. We're stuck with them as they argue, snort coke, and generally waste time until the next scare scene.

There is good stuff here, involving creepy foxes and some wonderfully evoked rural locations - that tree and the ruins are atmospheric without the film-makers even trying - but it's lost in a welter of average acting and sheer mediocrity. When the horror hits, there's way too much deafening screaming and the scares feel oddly diluted. In retrospect, I'd stick with THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT.