Hollow

The post-‘Blair Witch’ shaky-cam horror movie, already teetering on the edge of oblivion, drops off a cliff with this micro-budget British effort, set partly in the ruins of a spooky abandoned church beside the sea in Dunwich, Suffolk. A year after the death of her vicar grandfather, nice girl Emma (Emily Plumtree) visits his isolated home to sort through his papers and to party with her sporty fiancé Scott (Matt Stokoe), her troubled ex-boyfriend James (Sam Stockman), and his slutty new girlfriend Lynne (Jessica Ellerby). Inevitably, they get talking about the local legend, which involves an ancient tree and recurring spates of couples hanging themselves from its boughs. Fuelled by jealousies and cocaine-induced paranoia, the tensions within the group become dangerously weird. Director Michael Axelgaard and scriptwriter Matthew Holt spend time establishing the characters’ emotional histories and current vulnerabilities, balancing the external, supernatural threat with the fraught dynamics of the group. But they completely fail to stretch this credibility-defying, stop-start plot into a full-length ‘found footage’ feature.