Once faded on the scene of the few survivors of the flood, the script jumps forward forty years to the modern era, ostensibly 2005 however, it would be simple enough to skip over dating things so exactly by dropping any title cards bearing the exact date and using both modern and retro sets and props to signify the era. Based on the later portions of the script, there is much hope that this can be rectified long before filming begins. It would seem an attempt to date this portion of the film, set in 1965, seemed to rather date the technique than place the actors in the proper period. But this is early on, and dialogue hasn’t been given its final polish just yet. That in itself presents something of a problem the dark tone of both the story and the later portions of the script, as well as the horror of the dam break itself and its aftermath, make the characters in authority – the police and even the dam workers – come off as oddly hokey and even childish. The film opens to a scene that would fit right in to a 1960’s horror film: a church meeting broken by an angry interruption and the late night ensuing horror of the dam break, complete with a somewhat bumbling police and engineering presence. A deal with the devil had been made for the souls of all those who should have perished in the flood the survivors negated that deal, and someone is out to make it right. A scant 13 people survive the tragedy and their survival is key to the events that would take place some forty years later.

That being said, the script does show much promise.īased in part on the true to life story of Willow Grove, a small town forcibly flooded in 1942 by the US government with the building of a dam, Dark Star Hollow follows the story of a town submerged by the accidental (or so it would seem) breaking of a dam in the mid 1960’s. This is an early working script, so it is not without problems, and having not read the novel as yet, I can’t speak to its success as an adaptation. With the film treatment presenting a new and interesting take on the old tale of souls sold to the devil for gains here on earth, and a (working) cast list to go along with it, I was eager to take a look at what might be waiting for horror fans in theaters in the next year or so. Fougerousse offered HorrorBid some reassurances from the inside and, in a great show of both kindness and good faith in HB, a copy of an early working script for the film, which is based on the novel that Fougerousse himself had written. When contacted for comment on a few less than hopeful rumors swirling around the film, Matthew J. As reported previously, the Hollywood machine had been kick-started in the earliest production phases on a new horror/thriller film based on a novel of the same name, Dark Star Hollow.

A dark hollow star