Forests are always a no-go area, especially when you’re on your own and especially when you’re a child. However, the teens in the trailer for The Hollow Child make the fatal error of allowing a young girl to walk home alone through a dark, misty forest. As expected, she goes missing without a trace, before returning, but as a different girl altogether.
The trailer – which you can check out below – brims with a chilling atmosphere and bursts with mystery as the secrets about the girl’s disappearance start to evolve. Taking expected inspiration from Corin Hardy’s beautifully dark fairytale The Hallow in more than just its title, The Hollow Child explores a similar idea about children and changelings in another quiet, chilling setting.
Synopsis:
Samantha has lived her whole life in different foster homes. Now living in a small town, she never feels like she quite fits in, even with her own current foster family who might adopt her, or the boy who follows her around doing her classwork. So, it’s perhaps natural that she doesn’t know what to do with a curious tagalong little sister named Olivia. One day, Sam callously ditches Olivia, who wanders off into the woods on her own and disappears.
For three days police and panic set in on Sam’s home. And then, Olivia returns unscathed as if nothing happened. It seems like a miracle until Sam starts to notice strange new things about her younger sister. Things nobody else seems to notice. Too scared to speak out of place, she doesn’t know what to do until she starts to learn that this has happened before.
The Hollow Child has been directed by Jeremy Lutter and the film makes its world première this February at the Victoria Film Festival.
Words: Jessy Williams (@JessyCritical)
