Why Making This Chilling New Horror Movie Was So Terrifying For Matthew Rhys [SXSW]

Director Babak Anvari's "Hallow Road" premiered at the SXSW festival Friday night in Austin, to an awestruck crowd. The tight 80-minute film is an acting tour de force from both Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys as parents Maddie and Frank, who get a late-night phone call from their troubled college-aged daughter (Megan McDonnell). She's been in a car accident. She's hit a pedestrian in an isolated road that's at least a forty-minute drive away, so Maddie and Frank rush over in their car (in the middle of the night, no less) to come get her and try to talk her through the situation.

Almost the entire movie takes place in that one car. We only hear their daughter's voice through the phone, and the audience is forced to imagine her situation as she explains it. This approach had a clear financial benefit — filming only took about 17 days, as Avari mentioned in the Q&A afterwards — but the choice also clearly made for a better movie. Staying in the car helped the audience feel as closed-in as the characters, as desperate as they are to finally reach their daughter. It allowed the movie to stay focused on its biggest strength: that Maddie and Frank are two very complicated, stressed-out people, expertly portrayed by Pike and Rhys. 

For Rhys, who joined Anvari at the SXSW premiere to answer questions from the audience afterward, the stripped-back approach of "Hallow Road" was initially terrifying. "I think I was more concerned about the fact that there was definitely going to be no hiding," the actor explained. "You are laid bare. It's just two people talking."

Director Anvari added, "I think at the very beginning when I talked to [Rhys], I was like, 'Well, the whole film is going to be close ups.'" Rhys then joked to the audience, "I was like, 'I'm out!'" 

Anvari himself shared some of Rhys' concerns. Talking about the night before their first big day filming, he admitted, "I was s***ting myself as well."

Rhys joked that there were some fun benefits to his character driving a car throughout most of the movie: "It was great to sit down for an entire movie," he said. "And it was very comfortable. And I knew what I would be doing with my hands the entire time, which is good. I wouldn't be accused of being Joe Cocker as I have been in the past."

Most interesting for Rhys was the production's approach to filming. He and Anvari explained how he and Pike performed most of the car scene in one long take. They did this long take several times, with the finished movie combining clips from each take. "We knew the whole script," Rhys explained. "So yeah, just treated it like a piece of theater. If something went wrong, you weren't going to stop. There was no cutting. You had to find a way back or around or however. But yeah, it was just death or glory."

The theater comparison makes sense. Like with a play, the quality and intensity of the dialogue here is the movie's strongest asset. It reminded me a lot of "The Wasp," a thriller that premiered at Tribeca last year. That's another movie that managed to stay riveting despite being set in one small place and only revolving around two characters talking. The difference is that "The Wasp" was an adaptation of a play, whereas "Hallow Road" is a pure original. It's the debut feature screenplay of writer William Gillies, someone whose work we'll surely be seeing adapted to screen again soon. 

"Hallow Road" is a gripping, claustrophobic thriller, and one with a really fun midpoint tone shift. It's easily one of the best, most surprising films to premiere at the 2025 SXSW festival so far. It's not clear when it'll be released in theaters or streaming later this year, but definitely keep an eye out for it when it does.