Hall (2020)
(On Cable TV, November 2020) It’s unnerving to see Hall while in the middle of a global pandemic characterized by lockdowns and social distancing, as the film rests on the notion of a respiratory plague running rampant. Against a pandemic background, a woman stuck in an abusive relationship is mustering the courage to leave her no-good husband while they’re off at a hotel during a long road trip. Much of the story is thus clustered around a long hotel hall, with victims of the illness eventually wheezing on the floor as the drama plays out. This is, so far, solid material. Unfortunately, the story doesn’t focus on the essentials, or properly manages to expand beyond the hall itself. The central drama is quite interesting—even provocative in confronting the personal with the grander-scope epidemic given what we now know about domestic violence during lockdowns. I wouldn’t change anything about it. But then Hall tries to expand its material with the story of a Japanese woman in the next room that feels like a sideshow at best: if the idea was to get the film to feature length, it only half-works: a few more subplots featuring more characters in nearby rooms would have been more appropriate in transforming this in an ensemble story. Then the film takes a significant nosedive with a pair of scenes featuring the always-interesting Julian Richings as a plague spreader and then, during the credits, an unconvincing news report delving deep into conspiracy theories. These are steps taken too far, and they feel especially unnecessary for an audience with first-hand experience with a global pandemic. They also contradict other parts of the film, and make the entire thing feel more artificial than it would have been otherwise. (I’m watching Hall as part of the “Blood in the Snow” virtual film festival, and half of my issues with the low-budget horror films presented are “You should have stopped writing the bad parts,” with the other half being “you should have continued writing the good parts”) Hall’s ending simply… ends, with very little resolution other than the main issue of getting out of the hotel—maybe they’re infected; maybe they’re headed to someone already dead; maybe the conspiracy will succeed; maybe they’re all already dead. I do like the concept of a horror film using a hotel corridor as a central hub—but the haphazard way in which Hall develops is just unsatisfying despite a good performance from Carolina Bartczak and some clever ideas along the way. But then again, I’m scrutinizing this film with far more rigour than it expected during its production: as amazing as that sounds, we’ve all become experts at knowing how a scenario set against a global plague would play out.
