Movie Review: The Hole in the Ground

The Hole in the Ground *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Lee Cronin.

Written by: Lee Cronin & Stephen Shields.

Starring: Seána Kerslake (Sarah O'Neill), James Quinn Markey (Chris O'Neill), Kati Outinen (Noreen Brady), David Crowley (Teacher), Simone Kirby (Louise Caul), Steve Wall (Rob Caul), Eoin Macken (Jay Caul), Sarah Hanly (Lil Jones), Bennett Andrew (Doctor), James Cosmo (Des Brady), John Quinn (Detective), Miro Lopperi ('It').

 

Parental anxiety horror movies have always been a favorite of mine – particularly since becoming a parent, which makes sense of course. Films like Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, William Friedkin’s The Exorcist or Nicholas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now are examples (although more is going on in each) and in recent years Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook is a masterpiece, and Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to Talk About Kevin uses many of the same tactics, even if it may not technically be a horror film. Lee Cronin’s debut film, The Hole in the Ground, isn’t as good as any of those films (that would be a high bar) – but it is an effective horror film in the same vein. Oddly, though, I think the central metaphor of the film doesn’t quite work – The Hole in the Ground may well have been a better film had there been no hole in the ground.

 

As horror characters seemingly always do, after a traumatic incident, the family at its core decide to move to a creepy, old house in the middle of nowhere. This is a small family – just Sarah (a great Seána Kerslake) and her young son Chris (James Quinn Markey) – who move to an old house, in small town England, which borders on a large forest. And yes, in that forest, there is a huge hole in the ground – something that no one else seems to realize, except for the local crazy woman, Noreen Brady (Aki Kaurismaki favorite Kati Outinen, brilliant in a small role) – who years before killed her son, apparently by accident, but many are not convinced. Sarah has a nasty scar on her forehead – she hides it with her bangs, so you don’t notice it at first, and it’s implied that her estranged husband – never seen, rarely spoken about – was responsible for it. She starts watching Chris closely – especially after one night where he seemingly vanished, only to show back up not knowing what happened. Noreen always insisted the boy she killed wasn’t her son – and Sarah starts thinking the same thing.

 

The film operates as a metaphor for Sarah’s fear for her son becoming his father. She adores her son, but of course, half of him is his father – the father who abused her. So she watches him closely to try and see signs of him becoming that man – paranoid, of course, that she will be powerless to stop him. For about an hour, The Hole in the Ground is an effective slow burn of a horror film – full of creepy moments and gradually building suspense. We’ve seen this type of thing before of course – where we have to watch the lead character to determine if she’s insane, or there really is something wrong with her son, but here, it’s done remarkably well.

 

The final third though is muddy – in terms of its plots and themes, and also literally. You cannot call a film The Hole in the Ground, and have a giant hole in the ground, and not have your main characters have to crawl through the hole in the ground at some point. But what is the movie saying in this sequence – as effective as it is as a horror movie sequence? What does it mean in terms of its themes – or does the film simply jettison them for the sake of some scares? I’m closer to that reading than any other, because I really don’t know how it wraps up what to that point I assumed the film to be about.

 

Still, it’s an effective sequence – as is the final shot of the movie, that shows the lasting effect of the trauma. You may be able to survive, to move on, to put on a seemingly normal face to the world. But inside – and inside your own home – you haven’t truly gotten over it yet – and maybe you never will.