Set nearly totally throughout an pressing automobile experience, Babak Anvari’s “Hallow Highway” begins as an intensely carried out, deftly minimalist household thriller about two mother and father driving to the scene of their daughter’s accident whereas conserving her on the cellphone. That’s all it is advisable know getting into, and all it is best to actually study beforehand, given how this race-against-the-clock premise unfolds, earlier than swerving in fully unpredictable methods.

Few movies have ever induced such immense tonal whiplash whereas exhibiting such tight formal management over their transformations. There’s a really clear boundary separating the type of film “Hallow Highway” begins out as from what it will definitely turns into, which all however cements its place as an enchanting artifact of this 12 months’s midnight film scene. Some may say it jumps the shark with a purpose to obtain this distinction, however as Donald Glover’s character as soon as naively famous on “Neighborhood,” “There was an episode of ‘Blissful Days’ the place a man actually jumped over a shark, and it was one of the best one.” Generally, leaping the shark is superior.

It additionally helps in case your movie is led by Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys, a pair of powerhouse performers who not solely discover a cautious stability between heartbreak and fury, however are tasked with promoting a complete story unfolding off-screen. Pike performs the depressed paramedic Maddie, whereas Rhys performs her problem-solving husband Frank, a middle-aged Welsh couple whose teenage daughter Alice (voiced by Megan McDonnell) has run away after a large row.

Amid pictures of automobile lights fluttering by means of the woods, Anvari lures us into the household’s life with pictures of their dwelling, together with a freshly damaged glass partially swept right into a dustpan, as if we’ve been made aware about the scene of against the law. The fraught threads between Maddie, Frank and Alice are the emotional driving power, so these are the one particulars we actually must see. When a distraught Alice calls her mother and father in the midst of the evening, revealing she hit a younger lady along with her automobile on an remoted forest path, the film tethers us to Maddie and Frank as they discuss Alice by means of the state of affairs over the cellphone, serving to her preserve the sufferer alive whereas attempting to discern precisely what transpired.

These preliminary scenes — a few of the solely ones that happen exterior the couple’s automobile — are enveloped in a haze of 16mm movie grain, giving “Hallow Highway” the looks of a warm-toned home drama. Nonetheless, the second they shut their automobile door and start driving Alice’s method, the palette and texture shift radically. A easy, chilly, digital façade takes maintain, as if the within of the automobile, the place we spend the next hour and alter, had been a world unto itself, shielded from the surface. It’s a spot the place characters can confess their most intimate ideas (and, if want be, concoct determined, harebrained plans).

The movie unfolds with livewire urgency as Maddie yells CPR directions over the cellphone, and the 2 mother and father argue about learn how to get a fragile, traumatized Alice out of this case, whether or not to contain the police and learn how to defend a future that now hangs within the stability. All of the whereas, Anvari and cinematographer Package Fraser make sure the digicam is affixed to the automobile’s inside, capturing every change and emotional beat with visible readability (they even delightfully exaggerate cellphone and dashboard lights for emphasis). The drive to Alice’s location is sort of an hour lengthy, a lot of which unfolds in actual time and throughout a number of cellphone calls — a construction positive to remind viewers of Steven Knight’s completed, claustrophobic drama “Locke,” up to a degree. It seems Anvari has one thing devious up his sleeve, dropping solely minor, easy-to-miss hints alongside the best way.

The film’s pivot into style territory is shockingly sudden, and but, it really works like a appeal, because of the exact methods Anvari, Fraser and editor Laura Jennings twist the screws. The once-static digicam comes unglued, as “Hallow Highway” takes inexplicable, hilariously jaw-dropping turns befitting of a darkish fairytale. All of the whereas, the movie maintains its unwavering concentrate on the household’s relationships, in addition to the stresses and anxieties they create dwelling (and into the automobile). It additionally questions how far Maddie and Frank are prepared to go with a purpose to rescue Alice from an more and more sticky state of affairs, when it seems she is probably not the one witness to the crime.

In the long run, the one criticism that may be levied at “Hallow Highway” — if solely on reflection — is that the confines of its vehicular setting, together with its reliance on audio to relay Alice’s story, stop it from leaning full-tilt into its most imaginative parts. Nonetheless, that it dips its toe into this territory in any respect is considerably outstanding, given the straightforward easy type it initially takes. With its dramatic themes unfold throughout two wildly totally different halves, it makes for a singular, propulsive thrill experience whose baffling existence is essential to its enjoyment.