#the hallow

[deepdwellingsteamboat]

THE HALLOW 2015・dir. Corin Hardy

[scorpiusstars]

you don’t know the feeling of being desperate for fics until you’re staring down an empty document

[midnightmurdershow]

The Hallow (2015) Directed by Corin Hardy

[gotrbmm]

[tlbodine]

Fae Horrors: Unwelcome & The Hallow

A pair of Irish fae horror films this week, both with a surprising bit of a "stranger danger" theme.

Unwelcome (2023), directed by Jon Wright, is about a young London couple who experience a violent home invasion shortly after learning they're expecting a baby. The pregnancy is fine, but they take the first opportunity they can to get out of the city -- moving out to the Irish country home of a recently deceased elder relative.

The only thing is this house comes with an extra bonus, or curse, depending how you look at it. There's a little gate at the rear of the property where you must make a blood offering (a bit of raw meat or whatnot) to the redcaps.

Going into this, I expected it to be similar to There's Something in the Barn in terms of "family fails to follow the simple rules and gets punished for it." Instead, we get something more interesting -- because the primary conflict in here is actually with some rowdy locals, and the redcaps themselves prove to be effective, if crude, allies. Just...be careful what you promise to the fae, because they'll come to collect.

Overall I really liked this one. The husband character goes through some bouts of being insufferable and moody because he's feeling emasculated by the plot in several places and his thoroughly capable bride has to do everything around here. But I actually felt sorry for him more than anything, and they overall have a pretty sweet relationship. I think I brought more subtext to the characters and the storyline in my own interpretations than the text actually supports but hey.

Also the redcaps are stupidly cute. I want one!

Meanwhile, The Hallow (2015), written and directed by Corin Hardy, was...uh. hm.

It's about a British conservationist who finds a sample of a mysterious black fungal mold slime...thing...in a forest that is in the process of being sold and privatized for lumber. Weird things start happening pretty much as soon as they move in and his wife unwisely takes the iron bars off the windows. Local cops warn them about meddling in the woods and stirring up the little folk.

Eventually, the scientist is attacked by some mystery creatures, and the rest of the film is basically a....cordyceps zombie + faerie hybrid survival....thing?

I was really not clear about several things in the plot of this movie, and reading the Wikipedia summary for this review isn't helping. I have so many questions. Beginning with, why does this scientist take his baby with him tromping around in the woods collecting fungal spores? Why are the locals more mad about him doing conservation work than about the logging company clear-cutting the forest? Is destroying the forest Good, Actually because now nobody can be killed by zombie faeries? What was the whole deal with that, anyway? There's a thing with a book that tries to give some exposition but I just...didn't get it. I also really struggled to connect with the characters and literally could not see a big chunk of the film because it's so darkly lit so.....maybe I just missed the cool stuff. idk. Other people seem to have enjoyed this film but it was not for me.

[agentlawrencefassett]

Joseph Mawle as Adam Hitchens and (sometimes) Wren Hardy (Corin Hardy, the director, actually used his newly born kid for some scenes with the baby, "Finn". The rest of the time, they used a doll and a puppet kid.)

Movie: The Hallow.

[beanbowlbaggins]

I just think about Joseph Mawle in The Hallow(2015)