‘Hallow Road’ review: Babak Anvari drives dangerously with Rosamund Pike, Matthew Rhys

Dir. Babak Anvari. Eire/Czech Republic, 2025. 80mins

Regardless of its vaguely-generic title, this well-crafted close-quarters suspense from British-Iranian director Babak Anvari is firmly-written, -shot and -acted. Calling down the identical line as Danish drama The Responsible (remade by Netflix), or Tom Hardy-starrer Locke, Hallow Highway sees first-time author William Gillies lace a dramatic cellular phone-led street journey with notes of terror because the protagonists hone in on the titular street in a primal night-time forest. The really horrifying aspect right here, although, is how far odd dad and mom will go to guard their offspring.

There’s numerous cautious craft on the wheel of this automotive

Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys spend most of Hallow Highway in a automotive on speakerphone with their daughter, who has run over and presumably killed a pedestrian. They floor the movie in can’t-look-away actuality whereas, outdoors, elemental horrors could lurk within the witching hours. Pike and Rhys make for a formidable duo in opposition to Anvari’s stark interiors, whereas the well-written interaction of marital tensions sparks. This Irish-Czech co-production could entice mature style followers, maybe a number of extra high-profile competition bookings after its SXSW debut, however an upmarket streamer certainly will come calling.

That is Anvari’s fourth characteristic and his most spectacular because the Iran-set Farsi-language Below The Shadow broke out at Sundance in 2016. Along with his movies operating from style to suspense, Hallow Highway walks – or drives – a line between the 2. Pike’s Maddie is absolutely the lead right here: the paramedic mom with anti-depressants in her kitbag who wakes in the course of the night time to a malfunctioning alarm. DoP Package Fraser’s digital camera has already surveyed the home as if it was investigating against the law scene: an empty wine bottle, damaged glass on the ground, unfinished meals, dad Frank (Rhys) asleep on his desk. Then the decision comes by means of: their panicked daughter Alice (McDonnell in a voice-only position), who fled an household argument in her father’s automotive, has been concerned in a success and run on Hallow Highway, a half hour’s drive away.

We don’t know why Alice has run away, or why Maddie is so on edge, and even why Frank is so stridently protecting of his daughter. Struggling to insert himself of their conversations, he insists that Maddie takes cost of the scenario when it turns into clear that Alice has not notified the authorities. Maddie’s makes an attempt to instruct her daughter in first help give Pike a chance to flex between instinctive authority and the vulnerability of a frightened mother or father who additionally is aware of when her daughter is mendacity. Rhys, too, pulls off some deft switches, shifting Frank from brash and bullying to fragile and insecure with the tick of an indicator.

There’s numerous cautious craft on the wheel of this automotive: that indicator, for instance, whose gentle flashes throughout Frank’s face. Road lights, site visitors alerts and a glowing console assist the area seemingly shift at instances of disaster: when Frank takes a improper flip, or after they realise that Alice isn’t telling the reality. Or, particularly, after they hear that one other couple has noticed Alice’s lights at midnight, and Hallow Highway begins to root itself within the supernatural. Plainly regardless of the variations arising inside this long-term relationship, there’s nothing this couple gained’t do for his or her daughter. Besides, that’s, to let her go.

Of specific word right here is the rating by Lorne Balfe and Peter Adams, which performs off a Depeche Mode track known as ’Behind The Wheel’, an atmospheric 80s synth observe which lends itself completely to a darkish night time of driving by means of the woods to an unknown destiny. The movie’s location isn’t specified, but it surely shot between Wicklow in Eire, and the Czech Republic, and positively the exteriors breathe an air of Celtic thriller over its latter third.