Right before I started up this movie, I got a call from my fake daughter, Cap’n Karen.
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Apparently, she had just run over her boyfriend, Mebyark DeQuag. She was calling me because... ? I’m not sure, because I didn’t have time for her hijinks, because I needed to watch this movie for *you*, my loyal Movieshyte audience!
Also... I don’t particularly like Mebyark. It’s not just that nobody is good enough for my Cap’n (although nobody is!), it’s that he’s kind of dingbat. Plus, he’s a dude. Yuck. I guess nobody gave Cap’n Karen the memo that liking men in 2026 is really gauche. Maybe I’ll write it up for her after I’m finished with this review. Point is, Mebyark sucks, and running to his rescue is certainly lower on my priority list than watching a movie on behalf of y’all. In addition, I would *NEVER* abuse my power as Movieshyte and suggest to my audience that they slide into Mebyark’s DMs and comment that the Boston DeQuags lick the nards (and oves) of the Connecticut DeQuags..... *wink*
I lovingly told Cap’n Karen to deal with her own mess, and spun up “Hallow Road”. Imagine my surprise when I discovered the movie was ALSO about parents with a daughter that ran somebody over and called them up asking for help. What are the odds?!!?!
So, the parents in “Hallow Road”, Maddie and Frank, are played by Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys. Doing Irish accents. For me, Rosamund Pike is a “telephone book” actor, which is to say that she could just spend 90 minutes reading the telephone book, and I’m in. If she’s using an Irish accent, I’m well able for it! If you don’t know what a telephone book is, look it up! In a telephone book. Matthew Rhys is a damn fine actor in his own right, and so I was certainly pleased at the prospect of spending some time with them.
Spend time with them we do. 90% of the film takes place in their car. And it’s a horror movie. Being in a car for the duration is... Disconcerting. If we are watching *it* come after our heroes, and we’re stuck in a car, it’s a lot more claustrophobic and unsettling than, say, if *it* is chasing them through the panoramic vista of the swiss alps.
Of course... They always have the option of just stopping the car and leaving. Except... They don’t have that option. Because the film isn’t really about their manslaughtering daughter, it’s about them. It’s about how they feel responsible for their daughter’s actions, and how that in turn leads them to revisit all the perceived mistakes of their past. You can’t just pull over to the side of the road and walk away from your guilt, regret, or sorrow. Thus, they’re stuck in the car, and we’re stuck with them.
For the duration of the drive, they are on the phone with their daughter. Early on, Maddie, who is a paramedic, is giving her instructions on how to perform CPR on her victim. The instructions... Are relentless. Time passes and Maddie is commanding her daughter to keep up the chest compressions, and then we hear a loud ‘crunch’, and Maddie says “You’ve just broken the ribs or the sternum, but it doesn’t matter. Keep going.” At this point, Maddie isn’t trying to save a random person her daughter ran over, she’s trying to save every single patient that she lost. The scene lasts uncomfortably long, and it’s relentlessly brutal.
Which is, of course, what guilt and regret are. Earlier I said “perceived” mistakes because, in an ‘objective’ sense, there is no way Maddie can hold herself responsible for patients she lost. They were in dire straits, and she was trying to help them. But objectivity and guilt aren’t on the same planet.
The same applies to parents. At some point, your children grow up. You might feel responsible for what they’ve done... But there comes a point where their actions are out of your hands. Feeling guilt over *that*... Over something that you ultimately had no control over... That’s the car. That’s driving inexorably toward self-destruction, and pulling over to the side and leaving the car doesn’t even seem like an option. That’s the horror of “Hallow Road”. It’s not the monster under the bed trying to eat your face, it’s the relentlessness of guilt.
We *also* get a version of the monster when a creepy old couple show up at the accident scene, snatch the daughter’s phone, and start talking to Maddie and Frank, who have been on the line with their daughter the entire drive. I was both surprised and not surprised (#wordsmith) when I watched the closing credits and discovered the creepy old couple were voiced by Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys. I didn’t recognize their voices, but OF COURSE they were! They were *punishing themselves*... A response to regret that’s all too easy.
Watching Frank and Maddie at the end of the film just act like “You know what? Fuck it.” seems like a natural conclusion. They’ve just spent 80 minutes putting themselves through the wringer, and maybe sometimes that’s what it takes to deal with these emotions.
So... Was I supposed to feel responsible for the fate of Mebyark DeQuag? Was Cap’n’s terrible driving a reflection on either my parenting or my dislike of her boyfriend? Once “Hallow Road” finished, I called Cap’n Karen back to get the deets. Turns out, Mebyark is fine. They were just playing a “Crash” sex game that apparently got a little out hand, but nothing too outlandish. I told Cap’n “Really? Matt Dillon? REALLY?!?!”. She responded “Wrong ‘Crash’ dumbass” and hung up on me. Huh. Who knew that there were a bunch of movies named “Crash” that you could model a sex game on? Maybe she was trying to emulate MacKenzie Shirilla, who also killed her boyfriend in an automobile accident?
I’ll be proud of Cap’n Karen no matter what she does (and her choices are hers, not mine, so I don’t need to feel guilty about them), but if she does run over Mebyark DeQuag and ends up in the same prison as MacKenzie, where she then joins the new Murder Inc... It seems kind of dope.
3/10