Summary:
After he goes missing in the woods and returns, a young mother suspects that her son might be an imposter.
My Thoughts:
I always keep my eye out for great horror flicks, and “The Hole in the Ground” received a pretty great Rotten Tomatoes score (88%), so I thought this would be a safe bet. I feel like I was halfway right. This movie was fine. It was made well on the budget that they had, and there were some really creepy moments. However, after I write this review, I’ll never really think about this film again. You won’t hear me recommend it on the podcast, and I’ll never go out of my way to watch it again. So yes, this was a decent movie, but I think that’s about as much praise as I can give it.
“That’s not your boy.”
To escape her abusive partner, Sarah O’Neill (Seana Kerslake) takes her son Chris (James Quinn Markey) across the country to find a new place to live. As they struggle to settle in, Chris takes to playing in the woods, where he finds a mysterious sinkhole. Chris soon begins developing unusual habits that lead Sarah to suspect her son might have been replaced by an imposter.
Now, first and foremost, since it was the Rotten Tomatoes score that brought me here, I want to address the fact that Rotten Tomato scores can be a bit deceiving. The Tomato meter doesn’t look at what a critic gives a film percentage wise, they just look to see if the critic gave the film a passing or failing grade. So for example, I gave this film a 3/5, which is a 60%. Technically that is a passing grade. That’s a D-, but hey, that’s still a passing grade. I bring this up because when I give a movie like this a three star rating, usually it’s because I think it does a lot of things competently, even if the overall product is pretty middling.
This movie has a lot of pacing issues. It’s borderline boring at times. When Sarah and Chris are beginning to settle in, the beats felt similar to a thousand other horror flicks. Cronin (the director) is competent enough to provide some moments of dread, which is why I was never bored enough to turn off the film, but those first forty-five minutes are pretty slow. After that, the tension starts to ramp up a bit; there are some truly surprising moments that add sudden shock that lingers.
Almost all of the movie’s tension revolves around Seana and James’ performances. Both of them do decent jobs; neither of them do amazing jobs. Some of the film’s problems come from the fact that James has to be terrifying, and sometimes he is, but other times he doesn’t quite have the chops to pull off what the scene demands.
I’ve seen horror movies where the mom/child relationship aspect is used much better than it is in this film. I feel like mom and son were almost always at odds after the first two scenes, so I never really felt that bond. If I don’t feel the bond between the mother and son, then I wont feel the strain and the tension later. I think of films like “The Babadook” and “The Others”, where we really establish the tender relationship between characters before we ramp up the horror, and that results in some wonderfully tense moments.
The overall concept is pretty cool, and that concept is what bumped my rating from a 2.5/5 to a full 3/5. I don’t want to give too much away, but as the film is called “The Hole in the Ground” I bet you can surmise whereabouts the story leads. As a whole the climax was the most satisfying part, and it made me feel like I hadn’t wasted my time watching this film. As far as what to expect, I was reminded of Neil Marshall’s “The Descent” and the 70s version of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”.
Verdict:
This is a pretty slow and average film that turns into a decent one in the last ten minutes. I honestly wouldn’t recommend this to too many people (unless you are a huge horror fan), but it’s not a bad film. If you’re just looking for a few spooky moments and cool overall concept then this movie fits the bill.
Review Written By: