The Hallow

The design work by Ivan Manzella and the Nolan Studio therefore utilises varied motifs and visual references from vegetation, moulds, and fungal sources, resulting in what Noël Carroll calls '[c]reatures with combinatory natures', anomalous figures that violate cognitive categorisation, mixing decaying plant and animal, human and fungi.1 These evocative prosthetic visual cues are reinforced through the use of other agents such as deliquescent slimes and unnaturally invasive roots, which spread infection and damage, wrecking home and technology. Some sequences are, moreover, edited together to convey urgency and action, yet lack clear intent and structure, making them frenetic set-pieces that could be from almost any film, such as a chase that takes place almost entirely in the dark, a scene where the family are forced to defend their home, and an all-too-predictable sequence in which they inadvertently wreck their only transportation.