An 80-minute film which for almost all of the time features two people in a car mightn’t sound particularly ambitious. In fact, though, Hallow Road is bursting with so many ideas and genres that by the end they risk blowing it apart completely.
At first, it looks as if we’re in for a mix of family drama, psychological thriller and anxiety dream – which indeed we are, but only for starters. After some characteristically disorientating (it turns out) shots of an apparent crime scene – an abandoned meal, glass strewn across the floor – Maddy Finch (Rosamund Pike) receives a 2 a.m. phone call from her distraught daughter Alice (the voice of Megan McDonnell). Following a row over dinner, Alice has driven off in her dad’s car. Now, she’s stuck in a ditch in a forest about 40 miles away, having knocked down a girl who ran out in front of her on Hallow Road.
With that, Maddy and Frank (Matthew Rhys) jump into the family’s second car where they and the film will spend the next hour – at this stage still confident that they’ll be able to protect their daughter the way good middle-class parents do.
As a paramedic, Maddy gives Alice phone instructions on how to perform CPR until the ambulance gets there: instructions which continue long after it’s clear that they haven’t worked – and that Alice is lying about having called an ambulance.
Not that Maddy is the only parent in denial. Despite fancying himself as the stern realist, Frank tells Alice not to worry; once he and Maddy get there, the two women can drive home and he’ll stay in the forest to take the rap for the crash.
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