"The Hole in the Ground" is NOT a bad film, but it is - with all due respect - the type of nowadays horror cinema I'm really getting fed up with. It's always the same: melancholic characters (usually a struggling single mother), a vague folklore legend as inspiration, a pseudo-intelligent script that leaves you with more questions than answers, two or three predictable but nevertheless shocking moments, everlasting helicopter shots of forests & treetops, dead-eyes children, confused open ending, etc. Etc.
It was truly boring and unengaging from the very first minute, but perhaps I missed the sheer brilliance once again, since writer/director Lee Cronin got a one-way ticket to Hollywood thanks to this film, and immediately made an impression there as well with "Evil Dead Rise". This unremarkable film is inspired by Irish folklore tales and revolves around a courageous young woman who, together with her timid and introvert son Christopher, goes to live in a remote cabin in a little town near a forest. They discover a massive - and I do mean massive - sinkhole close to their house, and shortly after Christopher starts behaving strangely. The old hag neighbor yells that Christopher isn't Sarah's real son, and we all know she's right, even though everyone claims she's crazy. And Christopher obviously has changed, but it's for the better! Suddenly, he does make friends at school and takes part in activities. Keep him, I'd say, even though he's most likely a changeling. Okay, so he eats spiders. Nobody's perfect!
My apologies, but the only way for me to make the viewing of films like "The Hole in the Ground" bearable is by being sarcastic about it. I was bored and distracted very early on, and it only got worse. The tense and scary parts were clichéd and predictable, the sequence in which mommy dearest is thrown back and forth in the kitchen is just silly, and the ending... Well, I dozed off, to be honest, and couldn't be bothered rewind.
It was truly boring and unengaging from the very first minute, but perhaps I missed the sheer brilliance once again, since writer/director Lee Cronin got a one-way ticket to Hollywood thanks to this film, and immediately made an impression there as well with "Evil Dead Rise". This unremarkable film is inspired by Irish folklore tales and revolves around a courageous young woman who, together with her timid and introvert son Christopher, goes to live in a remote cabin in a little town near a forest. They discover a massive - and I do mean massive - sinkhole close to their house, and shortly after Christopher starts behaving strangely. The old hag neighbor yells that Christopher isn't Sarah's real son, and we all know she's right, even though everyone claims she's crazy. And Christopher obviously has changed, but it's for the better! Suddenly, he does make friends at school and takes part in activities. Keep him, I'd say, even though he's most likely a changeling. Okay, so he eats spiders. Nobody's perfect!
My apologies, but the only way for me to make the viewing of films like "The Hole in the Ground" bearable is by being sarcastic about it. I was bored and distracted very early on, and it only got worse. The tense and scary parts were clichéd and predictable, the sequence in which mommy dearest is thrown back and forth in the kitchen is just silly, and the ending... Well, I dozed off, to be honest, and couldn't be bothered rewind.