Hallow Road is a 2025 psychological horror film directed by Babak Anvari and written by William Gillies. The film stars Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys as a married couple who attempt to help their daughter cover up the evidence of a car accident that she caused.
Paramedic Maddie and her husband Frank are jolted awake by a smoke alarm as their eighteenâÂÂyearâÂÂold daughter Alice calls in panic: after storming off in FrankâÂÂs car, she has struck a girl on remote Hallow Road. While Maddie and Frank race to reach her, Alice claims she called an ambulance, and Maddie coaches her through CPRâÂÂuntil Alice, terrified, insists she has crushed the girlâÂÂs chest. Frank urges her to abandon the body and get back in the car.
During the call, Alice admits she is high on MDMA, never returned to her boyfriend JakobâÂÂs flat as her parents assumed, and never actually called emergency services. The familyâÂÂs fraught argument reveals the source of their earlier fight: AliceâÂÂs pregnancy and her parentsâ pressure to end it. Frank vows to take the blame when they arrive.
Alice then reports another car approaching. At FrankâÂÂs urging, she drags the body into the undergrowthâÂÂonly to panic that the girlâÂÂs face is âÂÂchanging.â A strange woman appears, claiming she and her husband are out driving and offering help. Her tone shifts from gentle to intrusive and threatening as she refuses to leave Alice alone.
When Alice tries to flee, Maddie and Frank hear the woman smash the quarter glass of the car. The woman insists the girl Alice hit is alive and with her husband, and pressures the family for explanations. Frank confesses he planned to take responsibility, which seems to satisfy her. Maddie, shaken, admits she recently quit her paramedic job after misdiagnosing a fatal pulmonary embolism. Alice decides she will own up to her actions.
When Maddie and Frank finally reach Hallow Road, Alice and the couple are gone. A body lies in the brush. Frank examines it and returns with the devastating claim that it is Alice. Maddie refuses to accept it and calls AliceâÂÂs phoneâÂÂonly for Alice to answer, sounding kidnapped. The woman taunts them, declaring that she and her husband âÂÂcorrectâ girls like Alice and will do the same to her unborn child. The call ends as police block the road.
By morning, officers treat the corpseâÂÂapparently AliceâÂÂas the victim of a hitâÂÂandâÂÂrun. Detectives conclude that Maddie and FrankâÂÂs belief they spoke to Alice afterward is a traumaâÂÂinduced delusion, leaving the couple silent and shattered.
The film is directed by Babak Anvari from a script by William Gillies. Ian Henry of London Film & TV and Lucan Toh of Two & Two Pictures produced alongside Richard Bolger of Hail Mary Pictures, with funding from IPR.VC, XYZ Films and Screen Ireland.
Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys were cast as the married couple at the centre of the story with Megan McDonnell as their daughter. Paul Tylak plays a police officer.
Principal photography took place in late 2023 in Prague and Ireland. Filming locations included Greystones, County Wicklow in November 2023. Filming also took place at the FAK Films facility in Kladno, Czech Republic.
It premiered at the 2025 South by Southwest Film & TV Festival in March. It was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland by Universal Pictures on 16 May 2025. XYZ Films will distribute the film in the United States.
In December 2025, the screenplay by William Gillies was included in the best of the year by Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian.