Critics reviews

This ecologically themed horror movie scores points for atmosphere and imagination (the biologist first discovers the evil forces while looking through a microscope at a sample of mysterious sludge), though it isn't particularly scary. The characters are little more than ciphers, so I wasn't inclined to root for them when they got into trouble; I was more interested in the vivid-looking demons they ended up fighting.

After the initial mayhem, comes a long succession of repetitive, too similar scare tactics, and a foray into body-snatching/baby-snatching territory that kills much of the built-up momentum. That said, there's still much to admire even when there are few frights on offer. With CGI used only sparingly, there's an enjoyable tactility to the animatronics, make-up and puppetry used for the squelchy body horror and creature designs, and a few memorable images

[Hardy] has a good eye for what looks ghastly: the make-up team excel with the ghoulish, once-human foes here, now woodland demons who want to get their hands on fresh meat. The more briefly they're glimpsed, the better, as with those ravening troglodytes in The Descent. This, alas, is no The Descent. Visually, Hardy does a lot on his limited budget: it's the logic of the build-up that registers as disappointingly cheap and contrived.

Handled without melodrama and with a hushed foreboding, these unnerving incidents establish a mood that's spooky yet restrained. But instead of building on that eerie tone, the director, Corin Hardy (who wrote the story with Felipe Marino), leaps too soon to siege and savagery. It's as if an entire middle section were missing, one that ought to have milked the story's environmental underpinnings and Adam's ethical about-face from conservationist to sylvan saboteur.

Undoubtedly the most heart-pounding film you'll ever see with a "Fungal Research Advisor" listed in the credits, The Hallow fuses together a series of opposites—science and folklore, civilization and wilderness, model-work and CGI effects—for its superb, seething scares.

Canted crookedly against the skyscrapers of giallo, body horror, gothic, and slasher lies the quaint lean-to of Cabin Forest Horror. Spanning films as various as Evil Dead, Friday the 13th, Antichrist, Troll 2, and Friedkin's wonderfully unwatchable The Guardian, the genre meets a fascinating new aspirant in Corin Hardy's The Hallow.

The Hallow doesn't strive to make much sense, and its ode to effective, low-budget creature effects in the vein of Stan Winston and Ray Harryhausen is earnest but unnecessarily deadpan. Hardy exhibits genuine talent as he sifts through the greatest hits of horror tropes, killing off dogs and revealing intruders behind hung sheets, but his film feels less like a contained narrative than a surprisingly potent demo reel.

With its stop-start pacing, risky use of a pickaxe and eyeball-threatening splinters, The Hallow evokes the curate's-egg work of Lucio Fulci in his Zombie Flesh Eaters/The House by the Cemetery mode.

Despite an entirely familiar man-versus-nature setup, The Hallow managed to offer an excitingly distinctive variation... Employing impressive old-school effects, Irish director Corin Hardy has crafted an intense, folklore-steeped monster film that never loosens its grip.