Hoboken Hollow (2006)

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

I grew up in the "fruit tramp" years. My family went from camp to camp in season; cherries, apples, peaches, pears ... whatever harvest was up, that's where we were. Not Texas but California, Oregon and Washington state. There were all these tales about ranches that picked up workers and the workers were never heard from again. Those horror stories were a part of my real past. So this film touched base with my early fears. Since then I've learned how much of that was myth, but also how, a little slice, some of it was true.Texas got the headlines but it wasn't an isolated thing. Some of the scary stories of my youth weren't tall tales.Hoboken Hollow is exaggerated cinema but has roots in an ugly reality. And it wasn't just immigrants, poor American's too, working to better themselves. During those years, many went from poverty to okay to middle class working on various ranches.It could have been better but I'm startled that the story was even told. It's the second half of the Grapes of Wrath.Just my opinion.Hoboken Hollow is a sub par film tackling a thin slice of history. It wants to address the subject but lacks the info to do so. Kudos to the attempt.I think it was honest - partly.

I don't want to say too much about this film so I don't ruin it for others but it is unlike most other horror films in the fact that it has an in-depth story line and it is shot as a sort of docu-drama. What I have noticed about many comments on many sites is that a lot of people are not following the story well. I think this is because most people go to see a horror film and do not expect it to make much sense so they do not pay attention to the details. If you miss some of the story line in this one it can really affect the outcome for you. It is not your typical no brainer, but there are some goods scenes that will make you jump or just plain disturb you. Also has a couple of good twists, I recommend this movie to anyone who likes to think or loves a little bit of gore. Also this movie is "based" on actual events, which makes it that much more unnerving.

I watched this movie with my cousins when I visited England recently and was expecting your typical "based-on-a-true-story" horror film. While it delivered the goods on that front and seemed to please the kids, the more I thought about it, the more it bothered me. It turns out - when I ran it by my parents - that I must vaguely remember the "actual events" from back in the eighties when the creeps that did this stuff -- a lot of it at least -- went to trial. When I went looking around on the internet (I think I searched for "Texas slave ranch" or something like that) I found some articles in the New York Times archive and the movie seemed to be accurate in a lot of ways. Who knows why the idiots didn't gang up on their captors and run away? Or why they didn't turn their axes and chain saws on the slave drivers? I guess each person probably had their own reason for being there. After that I got to thinking about why we average working stiffs let the corporations and police push us around. We'd take 'em easy if you based it on our sheer numbers yet we continue to play the game by their rules. I think it's mostly because it's easier to go with the flow than to deal with what might happen if you buck the system. Most of us don't want to be the one who dies to make an example to the rest. So the metaphor is the Broderick's are the governments and corporations that exploit us and the drifters are us! Heck, it made me want to see it again to test my theory but it's not released here yet.

This film is very documentary . It takes you out of your comfort zone and drops you in the middle of hell. The film places the audience in the lives of people that were actually tortured. I know a lot of people go to see movies for an escape, some go to be entertained, some go for fun. Not to forget those few of us that go to a film to see a bit of truth that is brought by an artistic point of view. This film left me with the most gut wrenching feeling that I've ever had. I felt such sadness for the poor victims that actually went through this torturous experience. I really admire the film makes that went out on a limb to make his film. I"m sure they knew ahead of time that viewers would give them grief that they didn't put ten half naked models running around screaming with their hands in the air. I'm sure some viewers were upset when a guy didn't jump out from behind the door and say boo... To wrap this up, if you are an intelligent person and want to see what an actual horror film is all about, then this picture is right up your alley. It's probably the only film I've seen where I was actually scared for the victims. Strong content so be warned.