Review of Hollows Grove

I was lucky enough to see a pre-screening of this movie, but I have to say that if I paid too see it in theaters, I wouldn't have been disappointed. For a scary movie, especially a low budget one, this is really good. Initially everybody watching it with me complained about the slow build and the fact that we were sick of the flood of "home movie" style scary movies. But this movie made up did it all very well. For starters, the home movie style isn't the same as in most movies. The camera isn't constantly running, shaking, flipping, and falling. It's steady for about 90% of the movie, and I thoroughly appreciate that. And the slow build I spoke about earlier is necessary, it helped me to settle in before it scared me. Which it definitely did. It didn't do it with crazy cheap scares or jump scenes, but with that slow build I mentioned earlier. It built the tension and then cut through it. The characters are pretty well developed and the acting is good. Nobody is going to win any Oscars for this, but I wasn't left wanting anything from the actors. Everybody played their part, and they played it well. The story is the usual "we go to a haunted place and discover it's actually haunted" but the perspective is pretty different. Though the movie was semi-predictable, it kept me and everybody I watched it with on the edge of our seats, especially near the end. My only real complaint about this movie is the beginning and end scenes with the detective. It made it seem too much like an interactive movie at Universal Studios or something. But stay after the credits, and the bad ending scene makes up for itself.