The Hole in the Ground is a 2019 horror movie directed by Lee Cronin in his directorial debut. It centers around Sarah (Seána Kerslake) and her son Chris (James Quinn Markey) as they try to forget about their past and start a new life in an old creepy house in the woods. The Hole in the Ground (2019) movie review
Right off the bet, you have a huge cliche of horror movies. A family moves into a creepy house with flickering lights in the basement, a sense of unease, and and overall want/need to start a new life isolated from everyone they care to interact with. This has been done endless times and it doesn’t help the movie establish itself as anything promising. On top of this, Sarah’s son Chris starts to act creepy and Sarah tries her best to keep it together. She tries not see her son as anything else but her perfect angel that deserves her love. Admittingly, no parent wants their kid to be anything but perfect. It is still an overused trope in horror movies.
To the movie’s credit, the overall slow build up and the tense musical score by Stephen McKeon does give it a unique feel. However, that is where the uniqueness ends. The whole idea of kids being scary was new and fresh for a while but the creepiness fizzled out and all we are left in this movie is a young actor standing around and intensely staring at his mother while not responding to what she wants him to respond to. It is not a scary idea anymore. If you think kids are creepy (and they can be), you have seen this movie many times before. If you don’t find them creepy, the movie will be as boring as they get for you. Either way, it is not memorable.
The problem with this movie, as many people have mentioned, is the fact that it was not fully developed. The scares feel genuine as the movie takes its sweet time in developing it. This, coupled with a woman who is going through a traumatic moment in her life can be a good setup for her to be a bit delusional on how she sees her child. The actual hole in the movie can serve as a vacuum that sucks her in. It can also control her emotional happiness as she is not able to face it easily and move on. However, this wasn’t explored much so my analysis is just a speculation on what it all means.
I would have liked to see more character development as well as more explanation of what the hole was. We don’t know much about what it represented in terms of the local lore. A movie should be able to tell us this and not rely on us figuring it on our own. I also felt like the ending was hyped up to be something bigger than it was, or at least something more satisfying. I know budget plays a big role in how free the director can play with certain concepts, but don’t hype up something and then decide you have no money to bring it to life.
Also, there is a ton of dialogue, which was not as interesting as I hoped it would be. It mainly revolved around the mother asking her child certain questions. These questions help her answer whether her son is an imposter without him figuring out her plan. It’s a game of cat and mouse with not much more than an ominous score to send shivers down our spine.
Thanks for reading my The Hole in the Ground (2019) movie review
