Movies
[Sundance ’15 Review] ‘The Hallow’ Is a Relentless Creature Feature!
Reviewed by Fred Topel
At the intro to his midnight premiere of The Hallow, director Corin Hardy called it a grounded, dark fairy tale. It is that but it’s so much more too. It’s also a creature feature, a siege movie, possession and body horror. It serves all five and now makes me really happy Hardy is doing The Crow.
Adam is working for a logging company in a small town where the locals believe the forest belongs to some creatures. Now, even if they were just hostile locals, that’s scary enough. I would quit. The logging business can’t be lucrative enough to endure scary locals threatening my family. But of course, having watched movies before we know the townie freaks are actually right.
The Hallow is relentless when the creatures come after Adam, his wife and his baby. They just keep coming and break through every barricade, poke through every keyhole. Big loud jump scares are backed up by first rate creature design and staging of the attacks. When Adam is working on the power generator while the his wife is guarding the baby, she’s f***ed. Those things are coming at her.
That’s the siege and the creatures, but they can also possess Adam so that’s another threat on top of the above. It mutates his body so there’s your Cronenberg. There’s some good old black goo oozing around too. The fairy tale is in the mythology, which is explored in the third act.
All of the above is just a list of things The Hallow did right. Combining all those elements and keeping it intense, all with characters who have been established as passionate and loving, makes us invested in the ride Hardy is taking us on. After he’s done with The Crow I would be happy to revisit The Hallow again, but of course I would. I’m Franchise Fred and I think there should always be sequels to everything, indefinitely, no exceptions. Bring on Return to The Hallow, Bride of The Hallow and, of course, The Hallow in Space.
Released by Eli Roth’s label The Horror Section last year, Joe Begos (VFW, Christmas Bloody Christmas) horror movie Jimmy and Stiggs is getting an official spinoff movie.
Sebastián De Caro has acquired the Argentine spin-off rights to Jimmy and Stiggs from The Horror Section, and his spinoff movie will follow new characters in Argentina.
The title? Burger Night: Luli, Magda & Lore. Eli Roth and Joe Begos will Executive Produce the film, which centers on the same alien threat from Jimmy and Stiggs.
Variety reports this afternoon that the film will feature an all-female cast.
Agostina Palazzolo (“Ciclón), Agustina “Papry” Suásquita (Netflix’s “Envious”) and Maia Tarcic (“Letters to My Ex”) will star in Burger Night: Luli, Magda & Lore.
“I am thrilled with the cast — these are women of extraordinary talent, true cinema lovers, brave and wild. They are going to surprise everyone. Each one understands her character perfectly and they all fell in love with the original material,” Sebastián De Caro said.
In Jimmy and Stiggs…
A perfect storm of lousy news sees out-of-work filmmaker Jimmy spiral into a bender, during which he claims to have been abducted by aliens. Fearing their return, he contacts his old friend Stiggs to help him gear up for war. Begos stars alongside Matt Mercer (Contracted), practical alien puppets, and a whole lot of gore captured on 16mm film.
Daniel Kurland wrote in his review, “The world needs more playful, gonzo small-scale-yet-apocalyptic horror films like Jimmy and Stiggs. It’s a movie that has constant tricks on display and perpetually sprays blood in the audience’s face, but there’s an earnest center to it all.”
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