Hollow (2011)

Perfect cast and a good story

Expected more

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

The movie is compiled mostly of scenes with sex, drinking, fighting, and swearing. It's nearly all garbage. Just profanity. Just love junk. What is worst about this movie is that there are already many foreshadowing signs from the beginning all the way to the slow (but somewhat scary) end. I didn't really understand the point of the ruins. The dead fox reappearing everywhere made it also seem very obvious something was coming yet the whole gang still decided to test what originally was thought to be a myth. The big mysterious tree and profiles of people's hangings never hits their fear senses until the end when they themselves become foolish victims. This movie tired my eyes and almost helped me fall into a deep sleep. This movie is even worst then 'Unfriended'. This movie is the only reason why my Monday sucked.

Hyperventilation and hand-held cameras, a form as superficial as the film title suggests. Hollow, hapless and needlessly heeding, 'Hollow' is a found-footage film made from the second-hand wool of the Blairwitch and knitted into a jumper with two legs. An unexplained documentation of the folklorish 'suicide tree' in Suffolk - a Burton-esque tree ala 'Sleepy Hollow' - results in some danged twenty-something star-crossed lovers in meeting their untimely death. But lo and behold, they've recorded it all for no apparent reason other than to bore us with a half-baked story of love triangles and an ominously rooted sapling imbued with the notoriety of the golden gate bridge.The premise, which had some room to manoeuvre but didn't, is actually the best thing about the film. The tree has some mystical quality to it: its grandeur omnipotent, its open crevice through the bark intriguing, its myth - though far-fetched - compelling. These qualities were not utilised to the film's advantage, opting for a cheap implicature (that has no resolve) and swarms of red herrings that add absolutely no value to a narrative adamantly focused on banal teeny-romances and infidelities. Griping further, the found- footage format is so ineffective that the film is a torrid watch. The camera, at least for the first half of the movie, has no motivational function at all. Even when it is used as a motorisation to the unfolding plot, it is used primarily for its light source. Innovative, yes, but for the spectator to regard, it's messy, incoherent and inadvertently abstract. It's not that there hasn't been some introspection in creating the machination of reality - the East Anglian video report at the start of the film, camera-wielding asthmatics, plumb points of perspective - it's that the filmmakers have gone ultra-rustic in their 'real' approach in attaining verisimilitude. Even the budgetary aesthetics of found-footage have some stylistic credibility, notably to make sure that the audience can buy-in to the concept and follow the story with relative ease. 'Hollow' isn't (and doesn't need to be) a compositional masterpiece - found-footage films rarely are - but it DID need some traction to tie the viewer to the film instead of the over-the-top slop on hand. As it is, the film may as well have been shot by a five year old with an iPhone. If cinematography is completely redundant, so is the shot itself and ergo the film. 'Hollow' is a film disadvantaged by the charismatic lure of guerrilla filmmaking, proof that the appeal of the found-footage technique cannot be taken for granted and is not apt unless there is a valid substantiation.

I just finished watching this movie and I am not going to spend time writing a very thorough review.To review this movie in one sentence, it would have been - We have seen it all before. This is a very typical 'horror' movie and if you have seen many budget horror movies before, this movie will feel very familiar. What makes this one worse than average is that it does not really have any thing special. It is an extremely bland movie. I can imagine that this movie was thrown together very quickly. Honestly, it even feels as if was made up on the spot.It starts pretty okay actually, well, not bad anyway. But even from the beginning everything feels very familiar. It is your regular intro/start of a horror movie. But when the movie tries to scare you, it is not scary at all. Every situation feels prolix. In horror movies you are suppose to get scared when you least expect it. In Hollow, you end up asking the movie to please, scare me already! It is the very opposite of what a horror movie should be.I actually had to look up what year this was produced. I would understand if it was right after The Blair Witch Project, when pretty much the found footage genre was new. There was not much to learn from back then. But this is from 2011(!). There are tons of great found footage horror movies released when Hollow was made. Tons of movies to get inspiration from. The overall 'horror level' in this movie could be explained as bland in lack for better words.Movies I would recommend instead of this one is Them/Ils (2006), or even Chernobyl Diaries (2012). Many don't even like the latter, but compared to Hollow, it is the most hectic action movie you can find.

I remember seeing this movie at the Fantasia Festival in Montreal. I am a big fan of those Found Footage movies... really I do love them, but That movie... boring... bland... forgettable at most.I kinda felt bad in the theater... the producer and director where present and were happy to present us the movie in exclusivity... people seemed happy and all in the room... but by the time the movie ended, it was dead silence... the movie crew were standing in front of the screen, waiting for perhaps some cheering or even question from the viewers... but Nothing... everyone in the theater were bummed and leaving silently. Producers were standing still in an awkward silent room with people trying to flee. Yeah the movie is that bad.