william_morris Once the story gets rolling it follows three completely unlike-able main characters continually being unpleasant to one another. Will they die? Will they live? We are never given a reason to care. The problem with starting your movie with *that* much tension is that once you peak there's nowhere to go, and it peaks in the first twenty minutes. Jump scare, scream, rinse, repeat for-EVER. Not even the beginnings of entertaining.

Wuchak RELEASED TO TV in 2015, "The Hollow" is about three sisters (Stephanie Hunt, Sarah Dugdale & Alisha Newton) who travel to an island in the Northwest to live with their aunt (Deborah Kara Unger), but they soon discover that the island's cursed and the inhabitants are doomed to die every hundred years on Halloween. The girls eventually meet-up with some survivors played by Richard Harmon, Hilary Jardine, Jonathan Whitesell & Dylan Playfair. There's a lot of good in this movie. For instance, the foreboding forest ambiance is excellent, as is the creepy monster, which is a fiery version of the creature in 2013's well-done "Scarecrow." The serviceable no-name cast is decent, highlighted by Sarah Dugdale as the emerging heroine and Hilary Jardine in a too-brief role, both of whom are easy on the eyes. Unfortunately, the movie's ruined by overkill horror-flick banalities that scream "the filmmakers are amateurs." The film would've worked better by slowly building suspense, but the creators evidently thought the audience had ADHD and needed some contrived horror-shock every three minutes. Things get better by the midpoint when the girls discover others and the mystery of the island is explained, but the amped-up horror clichés soon return. The plot's great, but the script needed serious work. Too much of the dialogue, for instance, consists of one of the sisters calling for another, e.g. "Emma," "Emma," "Emma" or "Sarah," "Sarah," "Sarah." Still, there's enough good in this movie to make it worthwhile for some. I enjoyed the good elements despite its flaws. THE MOVIE RUNS 85 minutes and was shot in Mission, British Columbia. GRADE: C-

captaintink As soon as you're introduced to the protagonists of the film you want to slap them. After another two minutes I wanted to strangle them and we haven't even gotten to the meat of the film yet.Now typically going into any creature feature you're not expecting much and when it's a cable show produced creature feature you're expecting even less. However it's never a good sign when you don't care at all about the main characters and you're waiting for characters to die.They are beyond annoying and I didn't care what they went through, I was rooting for the demonic spirit creature to devour them preferably slowly and painfully.I've seen cable produced creature features that were at least watchable but this was not one of them.

kmitchrog Characters were one dimensional and I had no sympathy for any of them. The best actress in the film dies in the first five minutes and I envied her escaping this mess. The remaining characters were about as likable as salt on an opened wound and the actors demonstrated their mastery of the range of emotions from fear to anger to anger-fear back to fear. Special effects were good and that's about all that saves this one from being laughable. Does anyone give a thought to plot anymore? Story telling is not incidental and having good CGI does not excuse you from making an effort at an interesting back story. Why does this threat/monster exist? Oh, well we grilled a few witches a hundred years ago and they threw some kinda burning demon tree demon on us, go figure. Movie is basically spent running around trying to get away from this nameless demon thing and screaming a lot... A LOT. I'm still not certain why the town locals, who seem to have known this was going to happen stayed around to be slaughtered, couldn't find a hotel with a hot tub? Or maybe they thought simply closing the blinds somehow made them invisible to the demon, cause you know, ostriches and everything. Don't waste your time unless you are heavily medicated and need a way to waste 90 minutes.