When you find yourself running through the forest with a great flaming scythe and the urge to murder your new born child, you should know your working holiday plans have gone rather awry. Such is that case in Corin Hardy’s The Hallow: a gruelling, forest-set monster fable with fairy-tale tropes and a wide range of woodland beasties that lurk and terrorise anyone who dares to trespass on their sacred land.
Incorporating a stark, rare-for-horror realism and grand performances to bolster the intriguing central concept, Hardy’s unique vision is also inspired by Irish folklore and skilfully weaves mythical traits into its shadowy, gothic design. While seething with originality, The Hallow references several horror classics including The Evil Dead, The Thing, The Descent, and even The Blob get a nod. But, while, in many ways, it feels like a homage, The Hallow stands on its own due to tangible characters, inventive supernatural sequences and by adding Irish folklore facets that are surprisingly unchartered in the horror genre.
Over the years myths and legends have provided the basis for various horror films with warlocks, leprechauns, trolls, witches and fairies all popping up in some guise or another to terrorise protagonists within ominous forest settings. Dating back to the Brothers Grimm tales, which have been adapted into both family and adult supernatural films, fairy-tales and horror have proved oddly fitting bedfellows. The Wizard Of Oz, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Sleeping Beauty and Disney’s later live action features Watcher In The Woods and Return To Oz are family features with fantasy attributes, but all contain creepy, or in the latter’s case, underwear ruining sequences that are far more scarring than many of their straighter horror counterparts.
The scene from Return To Oz in which the red-headed, pale and psychotic Wheeler screeches up to Dorothy in the dilapidated Emerald City before screaming into her face or when Dorothy accidentally awakens the severed head of Princess Mombi, are the hallmarks of a horror classic and not allied to the type of family friendly fantasy they were marketed as. Nicolas Roeg’s exquisite but disconcerting adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Witches also featured transformation/ child mutation scenes that were far too terrifying for its target audience.
What is interesting about The Hallow is that it is primarily a horror film that includes the fantastical elements of the family fairy-tale movies (laced with the luck of the Irish). Yet there have only ever been a handful of features that explore Irish folklore and even fewer horror films at that. Tomm Moore’s charming animations The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea are recent accounts and feature medieval castles, barbarians, black magic and mystical creatures while The Luck of the Irish (1948) and Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959) are the earliest known productions to address the Hibernian blarney. The Luck of the Irish stars Tyrone Power as an American reporter who befriends a leprechaun while Darby O’Gill and the Little People spins a codger’s yarn of a supernatural King, and befuddles viewers further with a singing Sean Connery.
Aside from the staggeringly crap Leprechaun franchise, there have been few horror films about Irish myths and legends. Neil Jordan toyed with Irish folklore in his gothic, ghost caper High Spirits: a Palace film from 1988 that features the eye-wateringly inappropriate grouping of Steve Guttenberg and themes of necrophilia, but this was, for the most part, a surprisingly forgettable comedy. Meanwhile, the Warwick Davies led Leprechaun franchise was a run of straight-to-video atrocities about a maniacal sprite. The original Leprechaun film started life as a dark children’s feature along the lines of Return To Oz and The Witches before the producer’s decided to turn it into a “straight, adult” horror midway through production, upping the scares, hurling claret and adding further violence.
Standard fairy-tale horrors, minus the Irish folklore, are in a slightly larger supply. Neil Jordan again, directed a Grand Guignol version of Little Red Riding Hood in 1984 with The Company Of Wolves, starring Angela Lansbury and David Warner. Then there was Snow White: A Tale of Terror in 1997 and the Grimm’s Hansel and Gretel story provided the basis for Korean director Pil-sung Yim’s excellent 2007 adaptation Henjel gwa Geuretel, and the generic but barnstorming Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters in 2013 which starred Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton, as the put-upon brother and sister turned hunters. Dario Argento was even said to be inspired by Snow White and the Seven Dwarves when directing/ designing Suspiria while Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth is the classic example of a perfect, modern fairy-tale horror that doesn’t stem from a source.
While The Hallow is based on an original story, it emulates other classic horrors, most notably The Evil Dead. Raimi’s Dentist funded classic also features loose fairy-tale elements itself: cracked, woodland witches, dark forces and ancient texts while sharing loose links to The Wizard Of Oz. Victor Fleming’s 1939 classic is one of Sam Raimi’s favourite films and like his demented debut The Evil Dead, also features wicked witches and psychotic, corporeal trees. It’s nice to deliberate that the tree in which Dorothy threw the apple at in The Wizard of Oz is related to the one that attacked Ellen Sandweiss in The Evil Dead but Raimi’s love for the 1939 film is widely known and lead to him directing his own Oz –set adventure in 2013 with Oz the Great and Powerful.
Throughout the 1980s more fairy-tale/ horrors emerged with John Carl Buechler’s Troll (1986): a big boxed video “classic” about a young boy (named Harry Potter) who journeys through a portal to battle an army of evil witches, trolls and monsters. Even though the main antagonist troll of the title looks like the hideous offspring of Sid James and an Ewok, Troll (the film) is more funny than terrifying, and considered something of an underground classic among 80s horror fans. It also spawned a sequel, widely deemed as one of the worst films of all times, and for that reason alone, has earned a legion of followers. The original Troll is worth checking out for an unbelievable sequence in which Sonny Bono transforms into a stop-motion shrub. A sight that everybody should behold at least once in life, just to know that it’s there.
While such kitsch factors do not appear in The Hallow, the film features many greater attributes and marks Corn Hardy as a director with a vision worth keeping an eye on. It’s a unique and frequently thrilling genre hybrid/ monstrosity, blending classic fantasy/ horror tropes with innovative, skull-shuddering terror scenes and effective shocks that leave a lasting impression. While we wait with bated breath for Hardy’s much mooted, supposedly cursed and constantly side-lined The Crow reboot, The Hallow serves as a tantalising taster of his unique visual style and a teasing suggestion of what he might do next.
The Hallow is released on November 13th.
