Hollow Trees

Brace yourself: it’s the end of the world again. 11 years after the war, according to the caption at the start. There’s some rationale to this figure. It’s about as long as the toughest kinds of tinned food last. Perhaps propelled by this, people have started leaving the cities and moving into the countryside. Kent (Tom Kerrisk) and the boy Danny (Louis Kirwan) have lived there for many years, in their little cottage – Danny can’t remember anything else – but now it is feeling less and less safe. What’s more, Danny is growing up, and getting to the age where he wants to accompany his father on hunting trips. With mysterious monsters out there in the woods, this is a worrying proposition.

Humans can also be dangerous, of course. When Danny sees a woman being attacked by two men, he wants to help, but Kent, afraid they’ll get into a fight they can’t win, says no. One monster attack later and they find her again; this time, despite his efforts to dissuade her, she accompanies them on their trip home. She’s seen a plane, she says, and knows of a place where they can be safe. The central part of the film follows their efforts to get there.

This is all fairly routine stuff, and not much happens to distinguish it. There’s a brief detour into religious obsession, but it’s nothing we haven’t seen before. The success of the film, then, depends on three things. There’s the Irish landscape, which is suitable moody and atmospheric, if not especially well used. There’s the quality of the monsters, which are unremarkable but competently portrayed and capable of delivering a few scares. And there are the performances. Kirwan is good and adds some much-needed energy to proceedings. Kerrisk and Rosey Hayes, who plays the woman, both work well enough but are unlikely to convince you that you should be following this little group of survivors in this post-apocalyptic scenario rather than a similar group in another one.

The film is competently shot, with some nicely directed chases and a central action scene in the dark that stands out. The diligence of the scriptwriting is also impressive (Cathal Fitzpatrick was responsible for both), with details well worked out where many filmmakers don’t bother. It succeeds in establishing that this is a capable team doing effective work on a small budget, and if you like spending time is post-apocalyptic worlds, it suffices well enough. It just doesn’t have much going on beyond that, and given the strength of Irish horror in recent years, that’s a bit of a disappointment.

Hollow Trees screened as part of the 2026 Belfast Film Festival.

Reviewed on: 04 Nov 2026