Dark Hollow review: Southern Gothic creature feature is painfully slow

PLOT: Mining activity stirs up something strange in the tunnels beneath a small Appalachian town.

REVIEW: Written and directed by Daniel Byers, who previously made the nature documentary Wolf or-7 Expedition and the horror thriller Eradication, Dark Hollow boasts some nice visuals, surprisingly impressive production value, and a strong lead performance from June Schreiner, who may be recognized from appearances on the likes of Chicago Med, NCIS, and NCIS: Los Angeles. It’s a low budget movie that occasionally manages to look like a polished studio production. So there are certainly some positive things to say about it… but, unfortunately, I can’t say I enjoyed sitting through the movie.

This is a creature feature, and the marketing will lean hard into that element. The official synopsis tells us the story follows “a young mother who hunts a nightmarish creature emerging from an Appalachian coal mine to save her family from evil.” The poster features this blood-spattered character standing in the mine, wielding a jackhammer, ready for battle. Technically, none of this is inaccurate or misleading. There is “a nightmarish creature” that emerges from a coal mine and a young mother who goes to battle with monsters while holding a jackhammer. The problem is, the viewer has to take a long, slow ride to get to that action.

For most of its running time, Dark Hollow is more focused on being a Southern Gothic character study rather than a monster movie. The story takes place in an Appalachian mining town where the characters, including June Schreiner’s young mother KC, are concerned about how the mining activities are going to disrupt their lives. Their financial, health, and housing concerns are the primary issue, even if we are aware from early on that there is something creepy going on down in the mine tunnels. Byers moves through this mining town drama at an achingly slow pace, filling the movie with scene after scene of people having soft-spoken conversations. The movie is 1 hour and 35 minutes, but it drags along so slowly that it feels more like it’s 135 minutes.

Some audience members may be able to fully lock into the characters and enjoy watching this movie as a dark, slow drama. For me, this was too slow and dull. I couldn’t manage to care about the characters, and the wait for the monster to do something – anything – got painful. If you’re looking forward to the film living up to the synopsis and giving KC a jackhammer, you’re going to have to sit through more than an hour of drama, with just a brief flare-up of thrills along the way to assure you this is a creature feature.

Dark Hollow has enough going for it that it will likely find some appreciative fans, but other viewers are going to find it just as difficult to get through as I did. The pacing tested my patience and frustrated me, and the pay-off in the final 30 minutes was not worth the slow crawl it took to get there. Don’t expect things to suddenly get awesome when KC picks up that jackhammer.

If you’re interested, Brainstorm Media will be giving Dark Hollow a VOD and limited theatrical release on September 4.