The Hollow (2004)

Touches You

Sadly Over-hyped

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Having been told of his family legacy, a young teen descendant of Ichabod Crane learns the legend of the Headless Horseman is true and out hunting the townspeople's Halloween celebrations forcing him to stop the legendary killer.Overall this was quite a decent enough slasher. One of the better elements in this one is the rather smart story here that's much better than expected here, managing to tie up some rather intriguing storyline within the legend and making it seem realistic here that the events of the legend really happened here which forces this one into some rather intriguing scenes here. There's a lot of fun here in the opening with the telling of the story setting up the cemetery joke as well as the resulting encounter with the killer out near the shark setting up the story nicely, and the early tormenting really bring this along nicely as there's plenty to like here in this section. That in turn allows the second half to focus on a nearly non-stop series of stalking scenes beginning with the hayride sequence where the real horseman appears alongside the play one leading to some absolutely chilling scenes here going through the graveyard from the horse-bound killer whole trying to protect his girlfriend at the same time. The finale itself is another big plus with the final retelling of the prophecy come true as the big house confrontation to set that up comes off rather well, but this leads into the first of the big problems here. The low-budget nature of this one here is patently obvious throughout which is the single most damaging one here, rendering the supposedly scary being into a cheap, flimsy mask that does little better than the play-version of the killer, the kills are all off-screen due to a lack of showing off the body aftermath and a seriously short running time that keeps this one based around only a few scenes here as there's barely any room in the lot to really stretch out proceeds here which causes this to feel rushed along at the majority of the big encounters while dragging out the other scenes since there's little time to do that with the budget it is. The other big flaw here for this one is the series of constantly irritating jokes throughout here which tends to wear thin here showing off nothing but their treatment of him as an outsider in town, which isn't all that impressive and simply gets boring. After these, there's not a whole lot really wrong here.Rated R: Violence, Language and Brief Nudity.

Just saw a few minutes of this tour de force in horrible acting. This is a bad B-Movie trying to revive a common remade rehashed familiar story. I'm so glad I didn't invest more time.Judge Rheingold has aged.... really aged. And he can't wipe that grin off his face even when the scary things were supposed to be happening. He seems like he thinks he's still on the set of Beverly Hills Cop and plays the same character. It's quite hilarious to watch tense moments lightened up by the Judge trying to act scared but not being able to pull it off not even for a moment.But the show is stolen by Stacey Keach. I can't even say his acting was bad. Still has the deep voice but that script... OMG.... that script. Horrible. He must be paying off some big debts to red the lines and try to pull it off.The ending could not be more predictable and laughable. I mean could it have been done more often? I really don't think so. And if you're looking to be scared, you'll laugh at loud at the scary scenes. I'm guessing they ran out of money in the budget and decided that they needed the old "cutaway" shots so that you can fill it all in yourself. I wish I could even give this a star for something but I can't find anything redeeming.

Although not as hideously bad as I had expected, 'The Hollow' is a very paint-by-numbers film. I give it points for a)having some kind of budget, b)the acting generally wasn't awful and c)it had Judge Reinhold in it but other than that, it was your average disappointing 'horror', and I use the term 'horror' loosely. The film is very obviously riding on the success of Tim Burton's 'Sleepy Hollow'. Those of you who have actually read Washington Irving's short story will know that most of the characters that Tim Burton put into 'Sleepy Hollow' were not in the original story, it is very heavily embellished. 'The Hollow' tried to make out that the residents of the town were all descendants of the added in characters from Burton's film, the most obvious being Van Ripper, the grubby lunatic who tends the graveyard. (Van Ripper was the coachman in Sleepy Hollow)In the first few scenes of the film, we come to realise that this film is just another Scream/I Know What you did Last Summer/The Faculty clone. Sexy teens Nick Carter the football jock and Kaley Cuoco the cheerleader are mucking about in Sleepy Hollow's graveyard when their friend gets his head cut off by an unseen murderer. Cue Tom Welling lookalike 'Ian Cranston', who we find out is a direct descendant of Ichabod Crane and is the only person who can stop the Horseman chopping heads at random on Halloween.Most of the dialogue is pointless and badly written, as are many of the scenes (Nick Carter's Legend-obsessed character repeately dressing up as the Horseman attempting to scare people gets old very quickly). The action and horror are boring anmd unbelievable, and correct me if I'm wrong but I believe the Headless Horseman was supposed to be without a head. This Horseman has a deformed pumpkin with glowing eyes for a head. It looks more like an onion. The pathetic action comes to an abrupt end in one of the most rubbish finales I've ever seen. If you want a more thrilling story, go and read the book.

The Hollow is the kind of film you watch with a bunch of friends and family who have a good sense of humor. The story uses the archetypal Headless Horseman theme and does a silly bit with poor Washington Irving's grave, but Stacey Keach is priceless as the curmudgeonly Klaus Van Ripper. The name alone is a hoot. What makes this film better ,for me anyway, is that my family and I visit Sleepy Hollow every Halloween for their Legend Weekend festivities. The original Keach character still gives tours of the Old Dutch Church where the bridge used to be and we got some great photographs of him amongst the graves of the Van Alan family. Anyhow, The Hollow, despite some gratuitous gore is not a bad escape for a rainy night and a bowl of popcorn. In addition, the hayride in the film is actually modeled after the Haunted Hayride in Sleepy Hollow that the local High School has been hosting for years.