The Hollow (2015)

Okay, the movie that will have the dubious honor of being the first that I talk about on this blog will be The Hollow (2015).

The Hollow is a horror movie (which you can probably guess from the movie poster). The premise concerns three young sisters, whose ages seem to range from early teens to early twenties, who are moving to an island to live with their aunt following the death of their parents. (I don't think it's ever made clear, but if I had to guess I'd say the island was off the coast of New England.)

Unbeknownst to the sisters (and their aunt), the island is cursed. Without going into detail, every hundred years a powerful storm strikes  the place, bringing with it a demonic creature that either kills everyone it finds or captures them to be part of a ritual sacrifice.

The one thing that The Hollow has going for it is that it shows the monster right off the bat; we get to see the creature within the first few minutes of the film. Moreover, unlike most horror moves, where bodies just pile up within being seen until the protagonist stumbles across them in the last five minutes of the film, here the bodies are often in plain sight and the creature is quite often witnessed going about its bloody work.  It's actually quite refreshing, to be honest, to see these kinds of movie tropes turned on their head.

Now, of course, we turn to our reason for being here, for this blog: what's wrong with this movie. In my opinion, one of the major flaws related to an issue that I seldom complain about - the acting. There were essentially two female leads, and one of them couldn't act, while the other spent the entire movie overacting. The end result was a product that made it difficult for me to engage in the suspension of disbelief necessary for a film like this; the bad acting just kept being reminding me that I was watching a movie where the producers obviously didn't believe in spending money for talent.

Of course, another flaw had to do with characters exhibiting incredibly stupid behavior (although that's not uncommon for horror movies). For instance, even after it became clear that the creature would investigate any suspicious noise, the characters practically walked around with cowbells on. (Following which, their attitude would be something like, "Oh no! It found us again!") Frankly speaking, I'd much prefer it if moviemakers would put a little thought into the project and try to find a way to advance the plot without having the characters act like morons.

There were other issues as well (eg, dialogue that felt unnatural, lack of context, etc.), but it's hard to know in a lot of instances where to place the blame: the screenwriter? The director? Who?  All in all, The Hollow wasn't the worst movie I've ever seen by a long shot. The problem is that there were a lot of ways in which it could have been better.