Hallow Road review – Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys race to rescue daughter in cracking thriller

How encouraging that immoderate authorities our movie manufacture is considered to beryllium in, it tin inactive find abstraction for a crackingly bully publication from a supersmart, disciplined first-timer who’s intelligibly been moving connected it for a while, planing down the edges and trimming distant the abdominous done successive drafts. Hallow Road is the benignant of spot that often emerges aft a spell connected Hollywood’s “Black List” of overmuch admired but arsenic yet unproduced screenplays. It is simply a gripping, real-time suspense thriller with a twist of the macabre, a movie astir household guilt and the instrumentality of the repressed, written by National Film and Television School postgraduate William Gillies, a scary-movie enthusiast who present makes his diagnostic publication debut. British-Iranian film-maker Babak Anvari directs and Matthew Rhys and Rosamund Pike springiness forthright, fantabulous performances arsenic the 2 leads.

Rhys plays Frank, a stressed enforcement joined to Mads (Pike), a paramedic. They person 1 child, Alice, a troubled and susceptible pupil played by Megan McDonnell who lone appears successful the movie arsenic a terrified dependable connected the extremity of the telephone – that being a jarring opposition to her perky leave-a-message dependable which her anguished parents support reaching. Her smiling look which comes up connected their telephone is also, we tin assume, a jarring opposition to her existent face.

Frank and Mads are tensely unsocial unneurotic successful the household home, due to the fact that Alice stormed disconnected hours earlier aft a colossal row, taking her dad’s car, driving down Hallow Road successful the mediate of a distant wood favoured by section youths arsenic a determination for weed-smoking, adored for its legendary associations with paganism. It is from determination that the terrified Megan calls her mum; thing terrifying has happened and her parents request to get there.

Almost the entirety of the movie is taken up with Frank and Mads successful Mads’s car, a benignant of dashcam cinema which owes thing to Steven Knight’s ultra-lo-fi Locke from 2014, which showed Tom Hardy arsenic a operation technologist trying to rebuild his beingness from the instrumentality of his car with his mobile connected speakerphone. They are frantically calling her, giving instructions, trying to support it together, wheedling, being stern, rowing with each other, ineffectively suppressing their panic, changing their minds astir what to do, astatine archetypal contented not to telephone an ambulance successful lawsuit their beloved girl gets into the benignant of authoritative occupation that volition ruin her beingness and theirs, too. Frank, who has ever spoiled and indulged Alice, starts readying a cover-up and arsenic they get person to the forest, they attack the acheronian centre of their ain secrets.

A spoilsport mightiness announcement that Frank and Mads look to beryllium the past parents near successful the UK who don’t show their child’s whereabouts connected their “Find my Phone” app, but this is simply a truly exhilarating, disturbing representation which foregrounds fantabulous penning and performances.