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 s far as modern Teen Horror flicks go, "The
Hollow" has a rather novel premise, even if its execution proves to
be sorely lacking. The script by Hans Rodionoff posits the question: what
if Ichabod Crane, the hero of Washington Irvine's "The Legend of
Sleepy Hollow", was a real person, and he survived his encounter with
a certain headless horseman. Over the generations, the name Crane has
morphed into Cranston, and it's back at present-day Sleepy Hollow that we
find teenager Ian (Kevin Zegers), an aspiring actor who is told, in no
uncertain terms by crazy cemetery caretaker Claus (Stacy Keach), that the
headless horseman is due to make a return engagement, and he still wants
the head of a Crane.
That's a pretty novel idea for a movie, you have to
admit. Alas, whatever genius Rodionoff's script may have had, there's
little magic in the movie that resulted from it. "The Hollow" is
like all other Teen Horror films -- full of clichés, stock characters,
and Dumb Authority Figures. The film limps along, with only Stacy Keach to
entertain, until the 50-minute mark when the film finally unearths its
horror elements and the movie manages to salvage things just a bit. Or at
least for the next 15 minutes, since the film barely hits 75-minutes of
actual movie even soaking wet.
There is a surprisingly decent cast at work here, with
vet Stacy Keach providing the bulk of the film's entertainment value. As
the Old Guy Who Knows Stuff, Keach's character does all those things Old
Guys Who Knows Stuff do in these Teen Horror movies -- namely tell the
hero about, well, stuff. The hero is played by Kevin Zegers, who is quite
good as our young hero. Zegers has been in a number of big-budgeted horror
films, including the recent remake of "Dawn
of the Dead" and before that, "Wrong
Turn". So the kid is no amateur.
The rest of the cast is hit and miss. Judge Reinhold,
many decades removed from his zenith in "Beverly Hills Cop",
plays Ian's nagging father, whose sole goal in life, it seems, is to get
his son to take up football. But son Ian is a bit hard headed, and
constantly butts heads with dear ol dad. And is it me, or does Reinhold,
who was 46 (or thereabouts) at the time of filming, still looks way too
young to be anyone's father, much less an old curmudgeon with a bad case
of jock obsession?
Nick Carter, of the boy band "Backstreet
Boys", makes a decent effort as the clichéd jock who of course is an
item with the hot cheerleader (Kaley Cuoco). As I said, "The
Hollow" indulges in so many stock characters and clichéd situations
that you wonder how the people who made the film didn't realize it as they
were making it and decided to mix things up a bit. Then again, I suppose
if they did that there wouldn't be so many generic and formulaic junk out
there.
Real horror fans looking for a scare needn't bother
with "The Hollow". Although the rating is supposedly an
"R", there's almost no gore to be found. Butkus on the
gratuitous (re: satisfying) sex and violence. Almost 90% of the film takes
place at night, and apparently the production was missing a
cinematographer who wasn't blind. It might have just been the result of a
terrible transfer to DVD, but "The Hollow" is a terribly grainy
film, making everything onscreen almost incomprehensible.
Of course the overwhelming darkness was probably done
to hide the prosthetic work on the headless horseman, who looks like a man
with a pumpkin on his head in the few scenes we could actually make
him out. It's all of the blink-and-you'll-miss variety, which is obviously
the result of filmmakers who had no confidence in their make-up effects.
With most of the violence taking place offscreen
(there are two offscreen kills in the first 10 minutes, then nothing else
until the 50-minute mark), "The Hollow" won't satisfy a lot of
people. In the long and short of it, I suppose it's an innocuous film that
might be worth the price of a rental, but definitely not a purchase. The
acting is, once again, surprisingly decent across the board, and as
mentioned, Stacy Keach entertains in every scene he's in. Nicholas
Turturro (formerly of "NYPD Blue") shows up as a Sheriff, but
his total screentime is somewhere around 2 minutes before he loses his
head.
When "The Hollow" finally hits the hour
mark, things do pick up a bit. There are some reasonably entertaining
moments, even if one will be hard pressed to make out any actual details
in the film's final 30 minutes. It just seems as if everyone goes out of
their way to turn off lights so we can't see anything. "The
Hollow" is a grainy little bugger, made on a tight budget, and
despite its "R" rating, this is really a PG Teen Horror film
with some severed heads and a faux sex scene added in to achieve the
desired "R".
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