The Found-Footage film is a small but burgeoning sub-genre of horror cinema, the most famous being the lower-than-low budget The Blair Witch Project which took the world by storm back in 1999. Other films have followed in its path, some adding successfully to the genre; the post 9/11 Manhattan dinosaur disaster movie Cloverfield (2008) & Spanish zombie film with a twist [REC] (2007) being two of the most prominent to date.
Cannibal Holocaust (1980) is generally accepted as being the first to utilise ‘Found-Footage’, an odd coupling between 1970s ‘snuff movie’ urban legends & the home video camera (an initial premise best exploited in 1993’s Man Bites Dog). But it wasn’t until the influential but little known The Last Broadcast (1998) & the ensuing worldwide interest resulting from Blair Witch that the ‘Found Footage’ film as a genre really began to take off. These range from the sublime but diminishing creeps of The Paranormal Activity series (2007 - present) & the deft daftness of Norway’s Trolljegeren (2010), to a raft of predictable demonic possession/exorcism-gone-wrong films like The Last Exorcism (2010) & The Devil Inside (2012).
British additions to the genre are scarce to the point of non-existence, which seems at odds with the country’s reputation for being one of the most haunted in the world. Michael Axelgaard and Matthew Holt’s Hollow (2012) attempts to redress this, with a film that tries valiantly but ultimately fails to escape from the long dark shadows of its more successful predecessors. Beginning with a Police evidence caption (a technique first seen in Cloverfield ) from the fictitious ‘East Anglia’ force, Hollow follows a small party of fairly unlikeable young people heading into the wilds of Suffolk for a weekend visit to a dead relative’s cottage. Fortunately for us, one of their number has seen fit to bring along his video camera to record this trip to the English countryside. So far, so clichéd.
Close to their accommodation is an ancient hollow tree, large and forbidding, around which many local myths have accumulated, relating to a number of deaths over the centuries. According to legend, the tree has an uncanny ability to entice lovelorn couples to hang themselves from its creaking branches, like so much unhappy strange fruit. I really wanted this film to work and, occasionally, it does. The East Anglian locations are a nice touch, especially the area around the lost village of Dunwich, a strip of coastline well known to fans of M.R. James, as well as the legends regarding Black Shuck.
There are a couple of pleasingly effective set pieces (an ill-advised cliff top search and a walk down a lonely country lane in the middle of the night both work well), but suspending one’s disbelief for the duration of the film is difficult. Sadly, some of the acting is as wooden as the titular tree, which really lets Hollow down. The main characters are all either disagreeable or unbelievable, making identification with any of the protagonists unlikely from the viewer’s perspective. When the inevitable occurs, it’s hard to really care.
Which is a shame because East Anglia, with its rich history of witches, black dogs and spectral visitations, is surely one of the best English locations for a truly scary horror movie. Unfortunately Hollow is not that film.
*****
© Adam Easterbrook 2013
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