Today's Feature: Hollows Grove (2014)
Hey kids! D'ya like those found footage movies? Huh? Aren't they just the best? Everybody loves watching movies that are deliberately made to look as cheap and shoddy as possible, right? It's what the kids these days are into, because these found footage flicks make them think that becoming a successful filmmaker is the easiest thing in the world. Why, you could make your very own found footage movie with your shiny new iPhone! You could, but you won't because you're too busy "feeling the Bern" or whatever the hell you millennial wankers do instead of actually accomplishing anything,
You don't need talent or expensive equipment to make a found footage movie; just a modicum of ambition, a few bored friends and a free weekend will do. You don't even need a script for these damned things because improvisation is always so much easier and more realistic than any pre-planned, properly formatted pablum a so-called "screenwriter" could come up with. Trust me when I say that screenplays are for pussies.
I should know; I directed Pig Fucker, after all, which is basically a found footage movie, meaning I "found" the "footage" on a "VHS tape" several years after I "filmed it" and "uploaded it" on "YouTube" for shits "and" giggles. Did you know that Pig Fucker has over 1,000 views? I'm pretty sure that means one mentally disturbed individual just watched it 1,000 times on a loop because they suffer from some arcane fetish, but that's fine. I'll take those views however I can get them. I'm not making any money off of my little opus, so you know I uploaded it because I care about the craft of... whatever the hell Pig Fucker is.
In many ways, Pig Fucker is very similar to today's found footage feature, Hollows Grove. How so, I hear you not asking? Not at all, really. I just typed that to fill a little space, because I don't really have all that much to say about Hollows Grove.
That's Hollows Grove, not Hollow's Grove, which looks more correct to my tired eyes, but I didn't make up the title. Hollow's Grove denotes possession, which is to say the eponymous Grove belongs to the Hollow, whatever that is. Is the title referring to a low-lying wooded area, or perhaps the hollow of a tree, being a snug space where small woodland animals may take shelter during a storm?
Maybe the title is referring to The Hollow, which is basically the Ultimate Nullifier of the Charmed universe, an ancient and apocalyptic force that, if unleashed, would eventually swallow up all magic in the universe, destroying all life in the process. Perhaps the titular Grove is referring to the place where The Hollow is kept under constant guard by a volunteer angel and demon, maintaining their eternal vigil to keep the limitless power of The Hollow out of the wrong hands. But The Hollow isn't kept in some grove on planet Earth; it exists in a magically maintained pocket dimension that only a handful of the most powerful beings in the universe have access to, in an effort to prevent any power-mad agents of order or chaos from getting their hands (or claws) on this uncontrollable force.
At any rate, I don't know how a Hollow can own anything, much less a Grove. But Hollows Grove just doesn't look right to me. Is this a grove of Hollows? If so, then what the hell exactly is a Hollow? Is that a slang term for a ghost? If so, then I suppose it is an apt title for today's movie, because, well, it's about ghosts. That's a shocker, right? Why couldn't the movie just be called Hollow Grove? That sounds so much better.
Hollows Grove is, as I mentioned at the top of this article, a found footage movie that follows a group of paranormal investigators as they explore an abandoned orphanage. These paranormal investigators, a charming coterie of imbeciles who call themselves S.P.I.T., which stands for Something Paranormal Something Team, aren't really investigating any documented paranormal activity, because they're too sophisticated to believe any of that bullshit. The S.P.I.T. team- Wait, that's redundant. The "T" stands for "team", so adding the extra "team" is just pointless, like saying "ATM machine" or "PIN number", which I never do, because I am a pedantic asshole. So just S.P.I.T., then.
S.P.I.T. knows how boring watching these "ghost chaser" shows can be, what with the hosts never actually finding any evidence of the paranormal, so these geniuses decided at their show's inception to give their audience what they really want, "seeding" their locations ahead of time with various haunted house effects, courtesy of their resident handyman Bill, who is played by my make-believe grandfather Lance Henriksen in a pointless cameo as he spends most of his limited screen time shoving a taxidermied armadillo at the camera lens. Hey, at least the man had a little fun, and in a neat bonus the camera actually catches the moment when Mr. Henriksen is awarded his per diem for arriving onset, which is nice.
All of the proceedings are actually captured by a secondary camera manned by some anonymous dweeb named Harold who has been hired by his old college pals to document the behind-the-scenes filming of an average episode of S.P.I.T., because his girlfriend just left him and they were all sick and tired of watching this weenie pout all day, and they felt obligated to give him something to do. That's what friends are for. The movie's ostensible on-camera lead is a bespectacled blank named Tim, whose appearance bothered the hell out of me throughout the movie, because I was sure I'd seen him somewhere before. Looking up the movie on IMDB, I found that the character of Tim was played by Matt Doherty, whom I recognized from his prominent roles in that dumbshit Mighty Ducks series of movies from the 1990's, as well as his iconic turn as that kid with the huge head in the Mike Myers-starring classic So I Married An Axe Murderer. This kid's all grown up now, and he looks like Sinestro, which is awesome, because Sinestro is a cool dude.
I'm pretty sure you can figure out exactly what happens in Hollows Grove, it being a found footage movie, after all. If you guessed "everybody dies", then you get a cookie, because that means you've seen at least one found footage movie at some point in your life. The S.P.I.T. frauds swagger into the abandoned orphanage acting like their shit doesn't stink, because they know their old pal Bill has rigged the whole place up with all of his clever jump scare tricks, and they expect their overnight shoot to go off without a hitch. But poor Bill was killed by the very real haunts before he could set anything up, and the crew is picked off one by one as they wander around the dilapidated corridors of Hollows Grove, which makes believers out of them all in their final moments. That's always how this stuff goes, so no surprises there.
The only real surprise the movie has to offer is in its wraparound device, which frames the S.P.I.T. footage as evidence in an ongoing F.B.I. investigation, hosted by an "Agent Jones" (played by everybody's favorite shrimp-loving dead soldier, Mykelti Williamson), who pleads with the viewer to come forward if they have any knowledge that might help close their case. Then right at the end, he pulls back a sheet to reveal that the F.B.I. has somehow captured an actual ghost from the orphanage contained in a fucking aquarium, so I don't know what else these feebs are looking for. Between all of the footage they've recovered from the scene, and the angry spirit they've got locked in a fish tank, I'm pretty sure this is an open and shut case, fellas. Ghosts are real, and they want to kill us! Tell the world. Tell everybody. After all, the F.B.I. apparently has the knowledge and equipment to safely capture and contain malevolent fucking spirits, so why is any of this a surprise to you, Agent Jones, if that is your real name?
I guess I shouldn't complain, because that ridiculous coda is really the only interesting aspect of the entire movie. Hollows Grove isn't exactly bad; it's just a paint-by-numbers found footage movie. You know exactly what you're getting when you watch the damned movie, for good or ill. If you like found footage movies in general, then you'll probably be nominally entertained by Hollows Grove. If you're kinda burnt out on the genre, like yours truly, then you'll just be bored. I don't know. It's fine, I guess. It's serviceably shot, serviceably acted, and serviceably presented. Perfectly adequate for your found footage needs.
YOUR TIME IS RUNNING OUT!
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