Four internet investigators known as the Paranormal Scream Team travel to check out Alabama’s Hellbilly Hollow haunted house and hayride. Reportedly, the woods around the property are haunted.
Would it surprise you to learn the attraction is home to a killer clown named Tickles? If so, Hellbilly Hollow might make you defecate your britches. Or so the miserable movie hopes, judging by three references to characters doing just that.
Running the place is a former carny turned hog and soybean farmer Bull, played by Kurt Deimer (2024’s Scared to Death) because Sid Haig is no longer available. The mute Tickles (Kevin Wayne, Malum), who lives in a school bus and eats from a cooler marked “MEEAT,” carries out Bull’s bidding, such as murdering three teens kicked out for messing with the talent, yet somehow are able to re-enter and spray-paint a spurting dick on the wall.
Any initial viewer interest is sapped by the sudden introduction of a supernatural element: the CGI specter of a vengeful voodoo priestess turned fortune teller (Kaila Little). In doing so, Hellbilly Hollow bites off more than it can chew, much less plug between its cheek and gum. It wants to be both a slasher and a ghost story, which operate differently. It’s not like Hollow couldn’t decide which to be; I suspect the idea of choosing never crossed the filmmakers’ minds.
Yet that split personality is not what sinks the pic. It’s simply relentlessly stupid, poorly written and performed even worse. Had it showcased the carnival games of darts and dunk tanks and the like as a hook, Hellbilly Hollow might have emerged as a gut-spiller worthy of “spooky season” priming, but these sequences are barely present and mostly incidental. One thinks Herschell Gordon Lewis coulda shoulda woulda milked that concept into a bloody good time. —Rod Lott