Dir - Babak Anvari
Overall: MEH
Fueled by tremendous performances from an almost exclusively three person cast, (one of whom is only heard on the receiving end of cell phone calls), Hallow Road unfortunately leans into vague and ominous platitudes during an ambiguous third act. It drops its otherworldly components late in the game, then seems to forget about them for a bit, then comes back to them in an unsatisfying fashion, dangling a pagan folklore carrot that creates a mess that the story cannot step out of. Though the latest from British-Iranian filmmaker Babak Anvari fails to nail the ending in this regard, (almost a guarantee for horror movies, and also the case in his full-length debut Under the Shadows), there is still a lot to recommend here. Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys could not be better as an already troubled couple who rush out of the house in the middle of a night after receiving a panicked phone call from their daughter, and their proceeding real time journey crystalizes the types of fears and frustrations that any parents face in letting their children loose into the scary world of adulthood. With lesser thespians in these roles, this could have easily steamrolled into egregious melodrama, but Rhys, Pike, and the voice of Megan McDonnell as their spiraling daughter sell the traumatic scenario with such sincerity that it forgives the unfocused genre aspects later on.
Dir - Max Tzannes
Overall: MEH
The second full-length Found Footage: The Making of the Patterson Project from indie filmmaker Max Tzannes is one of several comedic horror mockumentaries that has its heart in the right place, lampooning its chosen drama with a steady amount of glee, inventiveness, and sincere performances, yet it does so in a format that is perpetually ill-suited to the material. Most found footage movies suffer from this problem, particularly mockumentaries where unbelievable supernatural and/or murderous events are captured on screen, yet everything is edited together with conventional movie-making beats, on-screen titles, multiple angles covered, and scary music. Thankfully that later, (and biggest), faux pas is omitted here as the footage is played without such incidental soundtrack enhancement, but the other problems are still present. As a movie where people film people making a movie, the found footage framework is unnecessary since most of the humor stems simply from the hapless production which is riddled with increasingly absurd problems that are given an otherworldly kick. That is enough to differentiate this, even if the "scary" bits are cliche-ridden and poorly realized. The film has a lot on its plate, and Tzannes and his crew can be applauded for their ambitious attempt to capture the chaos of low-budget movie-making while poking fun at the horror genre's inherent silliness, but it only gets halfway there.
Dir - Michael Shanks
Overall: MEH
At least one absurd genre movie drops every year, usually with some buzz surrounding it and also usually within the body horror camp, (see James Wan's Malignant and Coralie Fargeat's The Substance). Therefor the full-length debut from writer/director Michael Shanks is 2025's entry into such ridiculousness. Staring the real life married couple of Alison Brie and Dave Franco, Together is front to back implausible with a severe tonal shift in the third act, but its problems do not merely stem from the outrageous premise. Brie and Franco are an early 40s pair of "partners" where the woman proposes to the man, the man has no drivers license or job, and they still miraculously manage to buy what can practically be called a mini-mansion in the woods. In today's economy? This may seem like nitpicking since how many times do we see characters in movies living well beyond the means that their professions or circumstances should at all dictate, but it only enhances an already unbelievable scenario here that goes into some half-baked occult nonsense that raises even more practicality questions that fight against the loose supernatural rules that are presented. Shanks does not so much as ride a thin line of harrowing, traumatic body-morphing horror and all-out schlockly goofiness, he instead barrels into these things at a moment's notice, making it all come off as if two different filmmakers were trying to make two different movies depending on what scenes they were shooting. On that note, maybe this it deliberate. Partners collide, so why not the film itself?
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