17-05-2025
Rosamund Pike enthrals in cinema's tensest car ride, shot in real time
Blame Aristotle. Every now and again a film-maker gets it into their head to clamp down on the old Aristotelian unities of time and space and let their drama play out in something close to real time. First we had Netflix's Adolescence, and now Babak Anvari's psychological thriller Hallow Road, in which a married couple, Maddie (Rosamund Pike) and Frank (Matthew Rhys), receive a panicky late-night call from their daughter, Alice (Megan McDonnell), after she hits a pedestrian while driving on a remote country road. Mum and Dad pile into their car to track her down, talking to their hysterical daughter on speakerphone. We join them for what feels like the longest 40-minute car ride you've yet had at the movies.
The film
