While “The Witch,” recently acquired by A24, certainly took festival audiences by storm when it premiered at Sundance earlier this year, it turns out that Robert Eggers’ spooky, disorienting period chiller wasn’t the only standout horror flick that played to a rapturous audience response at Park City. Also earning attention was “The Hallow,” directed by Corin Hardy, a film that, like “The Witch,” appears to be about foreboding woods and the misbegotten souls that are drawn to them. Apart from that admittedly superficial comparison, “The Hallow” looks very much to be its own singular, freaky beast, and a new trailer has landed online to give audiences a taste of what Hardy’s film has in store.
Ostensibly a ghoulish fable about a family in peril, “The Hallow” follows a Londoner (Joseph Mawle, otherwise known as Benjen Stark on “Game of Thrones”) and his wife (Bojana Novakovic) as they settle into an idyllic Irish village, ruffling the feathers of the local weirdoes and overturning the vaguely defined “traditions” of the surrounding forest. Needless to say, things get dark pretty quick: like really, really dark.
Hardy’s film is said to be a love letter to the creature features of years past—the trailer makes special mention of “faeries, banshees and baby eaters”, for what it’s worth—and upon the evidence of its first trailer, “The Hallow” looks to be one hell of a ride. Hardy is a director to watch for, and Relativity Media has put a substantial degree of good faith in him by tapping him to direct their reboot of 90s cult favorite “The Crow.” The central cast looks mighty fine–and look, there’s Michael Smiley (co-star of Ben Wheatley’s “Kill List”)–spicing up the proceedings!
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Watch the full trailer below. No U.S. release date has been set for “The Hallow” as of yet, but the film will see a U.K. release on November 13th and it bows at Edinburgh Film Festival tonight.