A single mother wants revenge against the man who killed her child.


HOLLOW is used with permission from Paul Holbrook. Learn more at https://paulholbrook.co.uk.


A grieving mother has received some startling news: the drunk driver who killed her child is being released early from prison. Already struggling with difficult emotions, Laura feels an intense surge of anger and hatred, wanting to get revenge on the man who killed her daughter. Though she knows wanting to kill someone is wrong, the ferocity of her feelings pushes her over the edge.

Seeking help, she tries to find solace and guidance from a local vicar, Father Hill. The vicar himself is a man who faces racial abuse, and he also struggles with feelings of anger, revenge and retribution. Despite his prayers for her and the counsel he tries to give her, Laura begins going down a dark path, stalking the drunk driver, who is still a heavy drinker. Her conscience tortures her for her choices -- and begins to pull in the vicar -- until the war between her morality and her thirst for revenge pushes her to the brink.

Directed and written by Paul Holbrook, this short revenge drama captures the moral and emotional war within a woman and a man, who both are essentially good people facing dark impulses. On the surface, they couldn't be more different in terms of gender, race and life situation. And yet both struggle with their impulses for vengeance and retribution in a harsh, cruel and indifferent world -- impulses that intertwine in unpredictable ways as the narrative proceeds.

Shot with a sense of grim, intimate naturalism, the film has its moments of suspense and tension but its overall journey is a more psychological one. The arc is less about the pursuit of retribution -- though we do see Laura hunt down the drunk driver that killed her young daughter -- than about the burning desire to make someone suffer, weighed against knowing that enacting such vengeance goes against one's moral code.

With such an internal focus, the writing and editing metes out the drama at a deliberate pace, making sure viewers understand the interplay of thoughts and feelings in the characters and how they lead to their actions. As a result of such intimate immersion in the characters, the stakes are changed: it's not just a question of whether Laura will get her revenge, but what she will compromise as a human being if she succeeds. Actor Laura Bayston's performance plays in these shades of moral, murky gray, complicated by her devastating grief, her pricks of conscience and her self-loathing at her inability to take decisive action.

The narrative's emotional scale becomes even more layered and complicated with the addition of Father Hill as a main character. Played by actor Karl Collins as a haunted soul, the vicar is a deeply moral man who nevertheless struggles with his anger at his racist tormentors. The development of the character adds questions of a spiritual and religious nature to the story and widens how the viewer frames the increasingly desperate, sad story. It becomes not just a test of morality, but also a question about faith, both in humanity and in the meaning of life itself.

Can these two flawed, deeply human people find peace? Is Father Hill's faith misplaced in a world indifferent to people's suffering? What happens when we don't trust or believe in a moral universe and take matters of justice and retribution into our hands? Such questions propel HOLLOW to its haunting, devastating conclusion -- one that plays out in ways that are both unpredictable and yet tragically not unexpected.