As cinematic challenges go, keeping things interesting while shooting in a confined space for a lengthy period is one of the more demanding and impressive feats. Steven Knight and Tom Hardy successfully accomplished it back in 2013 with the car-centric Locke, a movie which makes for a congruent compilation with Babak Anvari’s excellent fourth feature Hallow Road. For the vast majority of the latter’s 80-minute runtime is focused on two actors in a car, and it makes for a lean, mean, tension-filled ride.
The set-up, by debut screenwriter William Gillies, is simple but effective. A panicked phone call from Alice (Megan McDonnell) rouses her parents Maddie (Rosamund Pike) and Frank (Matthew Rhys); after driving off in the middle of the night following a disastrous family dinner, she’s accidentally hit a girl with her car in the pitch-black forest of Hallow Road. And she has no idea what to do next.
A film where much of the plot takes place off screen needs actors who can really sell emotions, and the trio Anvari has assembled here are all incredibly affecting.
What unfolds is a parent’s worst-case scenario as they discuss and confront what the future looks like for them and their daughter, and any possible way they can get out of it as the situation at the collision scene slowly escalates. Concurrently, Gillies’ script smartly drip-feeds information about the drama within the family that has led up to the present night without tearing the focus away from their current dilemma.
It’s no less suspenseful for not leaving Maddie and Frank’s vehicle, and the bone-crunching sound design in crucial moments aids us in filling the visual void with our imagination. It’s enough to keep the momentum going for the first act, and then some, but a later detour into the folkloric is an unexpected and effective swing that adds a degree of creepiness while keeping things unpredictable.
A film where much of the plot takes place off screen needs actors who can really sell emotions, and the trio Anvari has assembled here are all incredibly affecting. McDonnell delivers an exceptional vocal performance as Alice, conveying the fear of a potentially life-changing mistake with a precision that doesn’t feel overwrought, while helping to preserve the mystery of what’s happening at the scene. And as two distressed parents on differing wavelengths as to how to handle the worsening mess, Pike’s weary but determined Maddie — an experienced paramedic as well as a concerned mother — balances out Rhys’ more volatile and panicked Frank. Being trapped in their harrowing nightmare is a nerve-racking thrill.