Hallow Road is a 2025 British horror/thriller drama, directed by British/Iranian filmmaker Babak Anvari. It had its world premiere at some Texan Film Festival that I had never heard of, and was released in the UK last Friday. I caught it this morning at the Everyman in Harrogate.

The set-up to the film is that a married couple (Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys) have had an argument with their daughter who then took his car and stormed off into the night. At 2:00am she telephones in a hysterical state to say she has had an accident and knocked down a girl who ran out into the road. Don’t worry about spoilers – we learn all that in the first few minutes. The film is then virtually all set in Mum’s car as they drive out to rescue their distraught daughter, who we never see but only hear on the mobile phone, which is on speaker phone in the car for most of the film.

Every parent’s worst nightmare, so all the blurb about this film seems to say. And as a parent, I get that. It is just that in those circumstances, that is not how one would react. Until it becomes a little supernatural towards the end, this is supposed to be realism. It is also in real time – you can tell that from the progress of the telephone calls and the satnav. However, given they had to get there desperately urgently in a life and death situation, why did he drive at considerably below the speed limit? There were no other cars on the road! And why did he stop at the red light for so long – just go through – at the risk of repetition, there are no other cars, and it is a life and death situation. I suppose going slow gave the parents more time to shout at each other and unfortunately that is what most of the film consisted of. Can I suggest, if you really want to calm your panicking teenager down, the best way is not to keep shouting at her over the phone with conflicting messages.

I just could not bring myself to care about these people. As a parent, I get the horror of the situation – but these characters were simply not credible in that situation. When we finally get to the car in the spooky woods, and the plot becomes a bit other-dimensional, it was a case of too little – too late. I just wanted it all to have stopped by then – I had definitely not bought-in.

Hallow Road was a very long eighty minutes – if he had broken the odd speed limit it could have been all over in sixty! I strongly recommend you do not bother!