HOLLOW is a fantasy drama told in reverse chronology. When his girlfriend is transformed into a monster by her obsessive best friend, an emotionally guarded charmer and his closest friend enter a fight that costs them everything they were too afraid to say out loud.

SYNOPSIS:

JACK (29, hipster handsome) wakes on a Seattle street, locked out of his apartment by his building supervisor BILL (40s, burly), who has taken the silver watch SARAH (26, gorgeous) gave him for their anniversary. With the bookstore closed and nowhere else to go, Jack settles into his favorite coffee shop where MARK (25, cute barista) serves him coffee, and Jack passes the time waiting until it is late enough to see Sarah. He falls asleep, wakes from a nightmare in which he screamed the word run, and heads to Sarah's apartment. He spots her through her upstairs window and watches helplessly as the room erupts in violence, books flying, purple light flooding the walls, Sarah knocked to the ground by an unseen force. The street empties and a red stage glides into view carrying the WOMAN IN RED DRESS (theatrical, Elizabethan, eyes of purple), trailed by rows of cloaked FIGURES IN RED. Jack follows them through a barrier into a magical space and the WIRD performs for a hypnotized crowd until the FIR begin dropping dancers unconscious and Jack finds no way out. The film steps back: that same morning LYDIA (23, goth) confronts Sarah in their apartment about Jack's necklace and when Sarah refuses to let go of it, objects fly and dark tendrils reach for her as Lydia's eyes flood purple. Further back the night before, Lydia and Sarah dance at a bar while Sarah tries and fails to reach Jack by phone, unaware that Lydia has already swiped away a text from ALEX (28) asking about him. Earlier that same night Sarah and Lydia run into Jack on a street corner, Sarah sees immediately that something is wrong, and Jack cannot tell her and pulls away. The thread pulls back to the bookstore where Jack and Alex work: Alex arrives bloodied and evasive until Jack tells him about their mother Claire being rushed into surgery, and the two hold each other up through fist bumps and lame jokes until the phone rings to say Claire has come through surgery but is unresponsive and may not have long, and Jack runs.

Stepping further back through the week: Jack sits with CLAIRE (50s, sharp, elegant) in her hospital room before surgery and she gives him a family necklace for Sarah and tells him to say what he feels before it is too late. Sarah performs the Lady Macbeth scene at the theater while Lydia watches from the wings, and Alex appears backstage to ask Sarah if she loves Jack before Lydia arrives and shuts the conversation down. Alex meets Lydia at the coffee shop and hands over three occult books reluctantly, warning her off, while she throws her coffee at him and tells him to stay away from Sarah. Jack and Sarah read lines together in her bedroom that night while Lydia listens outside the door then retreats to her laptop and an occult chatroom where a mysterious user sends her the titles of three spell books. Sarah walks home alone the next night, nearly hit by a bus, then finds Lydia outside a bar and the two argue about Jack and being forgotten before making up and walking home arm in arm. Jack, Sarah, Alex, and Lydia gather at Jack's apartment, the pizza burns, Alex leaves early and unreachable, Lydia leaves in contempt, and Jack and Sarah are left alone with tequila and the thing neither will name. Jack and Sarah have their anniversary lunch, exchange gifts, and still Jack cannot say the word. Jack and Alex sit at the coffee shop on the morning of the anniversary, Jack texting Sarah, Alex asking quietly if Jack loves her. Alex breaks up with KYLE (30s, jock) at his apartment and forces him out, then walks out himself and finds himself on Fuller Street where a burst of white light draws him into a dark alley. Alex watches the MIW destroy a monster before dying from a poisoned wound and passing the light to Alex, charging him with protecting the world from darkness. Alex sits calmly at his apartment table waiting for Kyle to come home so he can end things. Earlier that same evening Sarah drinks with the cast after rehearsal and forgets to pick up Lydia. Lydia finishes cleaning backstage alone, locks up, and walks home through the park rather than wait. She is attacked in the dark and cannot bring herself to tell Sarah when she finally calls. Lydia drives a drunk Sarah home from the theater, furious and shaken, absorbing the wound alone. Jack and Claire sit together in her hospital room and she tells him calmly what the surgery means and what it might cost. Jack and Alex are dismissed from Alex's apartment by Kyle and walk to the coffee shop together, Jack telling Alex he deserves better. Jack and Alex drink coffee together in the easy shorthand of people who have been each other's only family, Sarah's name coming up warmly and often.

Alex, now the MIW, tears through the FIR at the magic intersection and blasts a path to Jack. Together they fight the TERROR IN RED (TIR), a monster the WIRD conjured from darkness, until Jack looks into its eyes and sees Sarah inside it. In flashback the previous MIW tells Alex that the light chooses someone who needs a purpose and that he will be the warden of the world. Alex destroys the TIR at the cost of his hand and then his life, telling Jack that the WIRD is Lydia, that Sarah can be saved if Jack accepts what Alex must pass on, and Jack does. Sarah wakes alone in the intersection surrounded by dead bodies and police and answers their questions in shock. She dreams in fragments: Lydia's eyes flooding purple in the bedroom, then voices bleeding in from the intersection, then wakes knowing what happened. She showers, opens Lydia's bedroom door to find it exactly as she left it, packs up her life, and moves out. She retrieves Jack's watch from Bill by paying him in cash on the street, opens the door to Jack's apartment and moves in, has the old furniture replaced, takes his job at the bookstore, and lets Mark bring her coffee while they share a quiet grief for what they have both lost. Sarah builds a life around the space Jack left, his watch on the table beside her keys, until a knock at the door brings her to her feet and Jack is standing there.