Hollow

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.

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.

Pease like me on Facebook! We love getting suggestions and warnings on everything horror: http://www.facebook.com/pages/I-Heart-Horror/338327476286206

Four twenty-somethings—Emma (Emily Plumtree), her fiancé Scott (Matt Stokoe), her best friend James (Sam Stockman), and his girlfriend Lynne (Jessica Ellerby)—take a holiday in the countryside where an evil presence lurks inside an ancient, hollow oak tree, preying on negative thoughts, causing relationships to crumble and ultimately driving victims to a terrible fate.

Hollow has been described as the British Blair Witch Project, which is another way of saying that it is a complete and utter rip-off of the 1999 found footage 'classic', only set in rural Suffolk, England. And if, like me, you weren't all that impressed by Blair Witch, then I think it's highly unlikely that you'll enjoy this one either.

With four characters experiencing relationships issues, it proves extremely tedious. What's more boring than watching people wander aimlessly round the countryside in the dark? Watching them doing it while bickering, that's what! After an hour-and-a-half of following the unlikeable quartet as they investigate the local legend of Greyfriar's Hollow (as the tree is known), snort coke, argue, get lost, and become scared of their own shadows, you'll be longing for them all to die. Which they do, of course.*

2/10, plus one point for the gratuitous nudity from blonde hottie Ellerby (whose character is so dumb she doesn't think to wipe the tape when filmed in the bathroom), but minus one for for the contrived manner in which a good length of stout rope, so vital to the film's final scene, is shoe-horned into the script (really, who the hell uses rope for securing luggage to a roof-rack when bungee cords and tie down straps work so much better?).

*NOT a spoiler, since we are told that they all die in the very first scene.

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.

To review this movie in one sentence, it would have been - We have seen it all before. This is a very typical 'horror' movie and if you have seen many budget horror movies before, this movie will feel very familiar. What makes this one worse than average is that it does not really have any thing special. It is an extremely bland movie. I can imagine that this movie was thrown together very quickly. Honestly, it even feels as if was made up on the spot.

It starts pretty okay actually, well, not bad anyway. But even from the beginning everything feels very familiar. It is your regular intro/start of a horror movie. But when the movie tries to scare you, it is not scary at all. Every situation feels dragged out. In horror movies you are suppose to get scared when you least expect it. In Hollow, you end up asking the movie to please, scare me already! It is the very opposite of what a horror movie should be.

I actually had to look up what year this was produced. I would understand if it was right after The Blair Witch Project, when pretty much the found footage genre was new. There was not much to learn from back then. But this is from 2011(!). There are tons of great found footage horror movies released when Hollow was made. Tons of movies to get inspiration from. The overall 'horror level' in this movie could be explained as bland in lack for better words.

Movies I would recommend instead of this one is Them/Ils (2006), or even Chernobyl Diaries (2012). Many doesn't even like the latter, but compared to Hollow, it is the most hectic action movie you can find.