Rosamund Pike is behind the wheel of the car-set thriller "Hallow Road." Credit: Prodigy Public Relations

It's every parent's worst nightmare. The phone rings in the middle of the night, and it's your child sobbing, calling for your help, and time is running out. What would you do to save them?

This is the beginning of Hallow Road, the latest thriller from Babak Anvari, director of the critically acclaimed psychological drama Under the Shadow. A call in the night spurs a pair of parents to race out to find their daughter, who's calling them from the scene of car crash. But set mostly in the car on the way to the collision, this on-the-road tale plumbs deeper than the everyday fears parents experience, into something remarkably more disturbing. Written by William Gillies, Hallow Road offers a claustrophobic setting where fear comes from the unknown of what's going on at the other end of the phone line.

The film's lean premise is certainly enough to intrigue. But the gripping performances of Pike and Rhys, combined with Anvari's ruthlessly riveting direction, will have you gasping for air.

Somewhere in England, stoic mother Maddie (Rosamund Pike) gets a frantic phone call from her 18-year-old daughter Alice (Megan McDonnell). Tearfully, the college student tells her mother that she's been in a car collision, and she's about 40 minutes away on a heavily forested stretch known as Hallow Road. And while she's okay, someone is lying in the road, unmoving.