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| (2017) 1h 32min |
Samantha is a troubled teenage girl who, through some sort of charitable arrangement, is now living with a young family of three. The lady of the house seems nice enough, though a bit emotional. The young daughter Olivia is nice too, and looks up to Sam. Sam even gets her own nice room, although she has yet to decorate or fully settle in. Against all this niceness, we have the distrustful man of the house, and we have an aggressive entity from another realm. More on that in a minute.
The main action starts after school when Sam is supposed to walk Olivia home but instead veers off into the woods to smoke with her friend, Emily, another girl from the group home where Sam had spent most of her tragic childhood. The older girls leave little Olivia to find her own way home, but Olivia never makes it home and her disappearance thrusts us into the search and rescue action. Once Olivia's things are discovered in the woods, the missing girl's father goes from treating Sam as an unwelcome disruption to actively blaming her irresponsible attitude that led to Olivia's unknown fate. Even when Olivia shows up again, suddenly appearing before Sam in the back yard one night with no memory of what happened during the time she went missing, Sam's position at home and in town remains bleak. As far as any adult is concerned, Sam causes nothing but trouble. As everyone fawns over Olivia's return, Sam starts to notice strange things. She sees things that may or may not be there. When the formerly sweet Olivia turns vicious, no one seems to notice except for Sam, whose only allies are Emily and Logan, a boy from school who likes her. Sam reveals to Emily and Logan that she suspects the real Olivia has been replaced by some sort of shape-shifting demon. Logan mentions an old story involving the town's crazy lady and a suspicious house fire. Sam thinks there might be a connection to what's happening with Olivia.
As for the dark entity, that's another toss-up as to whether or not this movie connects with you as a viewer: do you need to have everything crystal-clear? Does it make the story more interesting when you know the origin and exact intent of the dark entity, or is it enough to know only that there is definitely something evil lurking? Here we're given a pastiche of possible answers to the mystery of what's been tormenting generations of families, and what dark entity has driven the town crazy lady to madness. Logan and Emily want to help Sam find out, but ultimately Sam is left alone to confront the darkness.
Even if you're sick of the "teenage bloodbath" trope, you might like giving The Hollow Child a chance anyway, for two reasons. Firstly, the supernatural story is made more interesting because it actually takes "character" into account. Funny thing about this sub-genre is that, in one way or another, the characters sent lurching about the haunted settings are usually mere cut-outs. These movies always give us the SAME teenagers: the jock, the cast-out, the prom qu...okay, it's shorter to say The Breakfast Club cast. Just take those people, cut them out and put them into cabins and mansions and stuff, that's usually how they make the teenager sub-genre. But in The Hollow Child, the matter of who these people are is emphasized. One example is the home dynamic. Olivia's father dotes on her, and he heavily resents Sam, but might it just be that every time he shows anger towards Sam, he's actually mostly jealous of how Olivia follows Sam around? In reality Olivia is thrilled to have Sam move in, and she even looks happy when Sam calls her "Squirt" but all the father sees is a wayward blonde thug influencing his little girl. Who they are matters all the way to the last shot, so right from the very beginning we see how everyone feels about everyone else. It's a small but charming way this teenager movie differs from the usual fare.
Another way this teenager movie differs from the usual also has to do with the matter of character. You know those teen movie genre cut-outs previously mentioned, the ones who are always sneaking around where they have no business, and summoning demons, or whatever bad decisions that bring about their inevitable demise? Have you ever noticed that these people tend to be bullies, bimbos and brats despite their popularity? The set up for their tragic end reads like a Shakespeare play where there's a sort of gallows reckoning, an implied cautionary suggesting that these dead teenagers might have been spared had they only been better people the whole time. It's the opposite in The Hollow Child. For all the grief she gets at home and from her guidance counselor, social worker and the cops, Sam seems to be a nice enough young woman, actually. She's as nice to Olivia as any big sister, and pre-demon Olivia was clearly on Team Sam. Any issues the mean father has are his own, and he simply won't see that Sam genuinely just wants a chance. Shy, bookish Logan loves her, and Emily loves her, too, while the adults are just failing to connect...because adults. In this story, all the kids are doing their best, but they're wholly on their own to deal with the dark forces, both physical and supernatural.
There's nothing about The Hollow Child that should shoot it to the top of your October viewing list. Still, it's a decent watch for when you want something not-too-suspenseful, with minimal gore. 😱
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