Under the Shadow filmmaker Babak Anvari returns to South by Southwest this year with an atypical one-location thriller. Hallow Road is every parent’s nightmare, but its approach is uncommon. Actors Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys generate tension through a telephone conversation, playing a panicked mother and father who spend 80 minutes speeding toward their destination. It’s an exercise in fearing what’s not shown taken to the extreme, with fairy tale elements sprinkled in for our imaginations to extrapolate. The question is, does Anvari successfully sustain nerve-shredding edginess via dialogue—does the sure-to-be-divisive experiment work?
What Is ‘Hallow Road’ About?

Image via SXSW

Pike and Rhys star as Maddie and Frank, spouses who receive a distressing phone call from their daughter Alice (Megan McDonnell) in the middle of the night. Through sobs, Alice conveys that she’s hit a girl with her car somewhere on Hallow Road, near Ashkroft Forest. The parents leap into action and start driving toward Alice, staying on speakerphone as the shaken teen waits for help. Throughout the trip, Maddie and Frank do their best to rescue their child from a life-changing sentence—but they cannot accomplish anything from afar. All they can do is listen, which becomes harder as Alice narrates increasingly suspicious events.
Anvari subjects Maddie and Frank to a white-knuckled, organically tense scenario, which radiates from both performances. Alice is roughly forty-five minutes from Maddie and Frank to start, yet actions require immediate attention. Despite propping a camera inside Frank and Maddie’s vehicle and considering how Alice is never shown on camera, Hallow Road accomplishes its goal of tying the audience’s stomachs in knots using only the reactions on its leading players’ faces. Everything rests on Pike and Rhys’ ability to convey what their characters feel as desperation mounts, replicating the gut-rot emptiness of being unable to rescue a loved one.
‘Hallow Road’ Is a Parent’s Worst Nightmare

The energy is undeniably anxious as Maddie and Frank dart down backwoods roads without another soul in sight. They’re trapped with their guilt, frustrations, and impatience, prying open wounds suffered as parents. Anvari examines any mother or father’s ultimate paradox—you want to save your children from a cruel world, but how will they learn if they’re always shielded? Consequences are part of the human experience, but when they happen to someone you love, they’re a curse you want to absorb. Pike and Rhys agonize through these emotions like champions, embracing the ordinary horrors of caring about someone.
The problem becomes—and it’ll only be a problem for some—Hallow Road leaves everything to your imagination. Anvari leans into whimsically folkloric, fae horror details without confirming whether they truly exist. We’re at the mercy of Maddie and Frank, whether untrustworthy narrators or not. They’re stuck on the receiving end of a phone call with Alice, which becomes increasingly unsettling, especially when another car stops to inquire about what’s happening. We’re at the mercy of vicious sound design to experience what Alice is enduring, whether that’s the sound of cracking ribs during CPR or Alice’s snotty wheezes as she contemplates how her accident could derail future plans.
‘Hallow Road’s Ending Will Leave You Talking Long After the Film Is Done

Image via SXSW

Anvari and cinematographer Kit Fraser deserve praise for their ability to draw us into a minimalist woodland chiller using nothing but shadowy landscape outlines, frantic expressions, and a cellular phone. It’s a remarkable experiment but still experimental in a way that’ll leave some passengers behind. Please stay for an “Easter egg” in the credits that illuminates the storytelling further, but don’t be surprised if you’re left debating the plot’s intentions after it’s over. How the film ends, and the choice Anvari makes will divide audiences—but you can’t deny that the filmmaker sustains an impressive heap of pressure on an endless drive. As wheels keep turning, and Lorne Balfe’s score (plus a rearrangement of Depeche Mode’s “Behind the Wheel”) whispers unsettling rhythms set against flashes of crooked branches, Hallow Road becomes a beguiling mythical mystery.
For myself, because that’s the only read I can offer, I’m both impressed and slightly frustrated. Hallow Road is an oratory goose chase that tells you what you need to know but abides by a polarizing rule: whatever’s behind the door is scarier than anything the film can show you. That’s not exactly my style. Others will be mesmerized by Anvari’s dedication to Hallow Road’s dark lullaby that’s shot from a cannon. Performances are the spectacle, and both actors do a tremendous job translating the worst feeling any parent can experience. It all depends on your patience for slow-burn horrors, and if there’s enough nightmare fuel to stay along for the ride.
Hallow Road premiered at the 2025 SXSW Film Festival.

Hallow Road

Hallow Road is a harrowing and bleak parental nightmare that takes pleasure in showing you as little visual evidence of what’s happening as possible.

Release Date

March 8, 2025

Runtime

80 minutes

Director

Babak Anvari

Writers

William Gillies

Pros & Cons

Experimental cinema helps any genre evolve, and Hallow Road is no different.
Our imaginations race with the horrors that Alice might be facing.
Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys are fantastic.

The experiment itself, while ambitious, will leave some grasping for more.
Written fairy tales can be ambiguous because they?re just text?I?m not sure Anvari fully gets away with this brand of conversational horror.
It?s a moody film, but vibes alone only get you so far.