For all the ghouls and goblins that might be hiding deep in the woods around Hallow Road, there’s nothing nearly as frightening as passing the point of no return. We live by our certainties – dawn by dawn, plan by plan – only for a momentary choice, the smallest of mistakes, to veer us wildly off course and pull our stomachs into the depths of hell.
It’s that feeling that pervades Babak Anvari’s sickeningly effective Hallow Road. It combines the dread that washes over a couple (Rosamund Pike’s Maddie and Matthew Rhys’s Frank) when they’re daughter tells them she has run someone over while driving through the remote countryside, with an unexpected detour into the realm of folk horror.
