Directed by Chris Hollo and written by Jerry Robbins, a group of friends goes to a remote cabin by a lake to rest and relax when unexplained things start to happen. Cameras flash in the night as something sinister stalks them and strange people appear and mysteriously vanish without a trace. Starring: James David West, Kyle Rankin, Brendan Bald, Liz Atwater, Meg Barlowe, Austin Copps and Will Waldron.
Occasionally you’ll find a film that is of two halves, one that is successful and one that fall short, that’s pretty much the issue with The Legend of Lake Hollow. Starting with the positives, it creates the right feel, a nice air of suspicion, the tension is present and the acting is much stronger than you’d likely find in similar examples. There may be a few flaws but for the majority, the ensemble all do their best to create a gradually growing fear and a good level of panic.
However, while it establishes itself quickly, the cracks begin to show before long. The key problem being the writing, the basic idea of the story works and follows a very classic horror formula, but the details feel misguided. Firstly, in that it introduces a Native American theme, with no decent reason why and the choice feels cheap, although thankfully its involvement is minimal enough to avoid going into distasteful territory.
The second big issue that it faces is that the atmosphere and visual are lacking, it struggles to build that creepy, disturbing or chilling factor that it’s desperately looking for. The aesthetic never gets a hold of the dark side of things, a lot of the time it’s more akin to a comedy-drama, weekend away style film. Lastly, is its catalyst, its creature at the centre of their fateful trip, it lacks any sort of background or level of detail that would do it justice, to make it scary or threatening.
The Legend of Lake Hollow started with an idea that fits squarely into a classic formula of horror cinema but couldn’t quite make it work. There’s a decent cast, who do their best but they’re hindered by the story’s lack of detail and a few poor choices. It manages to build a nice tension but misses out on filling the atmosphere with mystery, darkness or threat.
FilmCarnage.com 
Respectfully disagree. No, it isn’t The Shining or something, but damn entertaining!!
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Yep, that’s the whole point, everyone should make their own verdict. And any decent horror fan isn’t going into every flick expecting something to the level of The Shining, if they did they’d be coming out rating it a lot less than 5/10.
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