The Hole in the Ground

There are good and bad things about The Hole In The Ground. The good things are the acting as all actors were very believable in their roles, the dark atmosphere due to an excellent soundtrack and good cinematography, and the necessary suspense and scary moments for a horror movie. The bad things would be the feeling that this story is just unfinished and the lack of explanation of what is really going on and let that be the major letdown of this movie. It could have been much better if the story wasn't that undevelopped and that's just a pity because it had potential.

The first hour of this film is creepy, well photographed, and reasonably subtle, if quite predictable if you've seen this sort of movie before. Despite the predictability it has the former assets.

Unfortunately, 1 hour and 4 minutes in, the scriptwriter abandons these assets. He could have gone in one of two directions. One would have maintained the creepiness and perhaps done something more clever, the other, which he chose, is an in-your-face pedestrian affair. I don't want to drop any spoilers so I won't mention what movie they essentially adopt for the climactic moments, but if you've seen a lot of horror movies you will recognize it instantly.

I have to mention another pet peeve. Among its other deficiencies, Hole in the Ground employs a tired old horror trope which, along with the jump-scare, should be banned from movies from here to the end of time. It's those moments where something creepy or horrifying is happening and, oh never mind, it was just a nightmare and we find the protagonist waking up in bed. Why screenwriters continue to think that this tactic is clever or effective is beyond me. It's a tired cliche and simply bad writing.

A basic, to the point horror. Not extraordinary and not bad by any means. Most importantly, entertaining.

I'm positively biased towards folk horror but this was overall a good movie. Could it have used a little more meat, a twist or two? Sure. But it was still successful in its own right. The acting was quite good, particularly by mom. It was also shot beautifully.

Overall not too too much to say, but an entertaining experience with this slightly above average folk horror. I would give this a 5.5-6... Would recommend.

The first thing I noticed about the film was the cinematography. The picture was dark and grim, which contributed to the movies thrill factor. With all of that and the above average acting, it payed out the films setting in the countryside quite well.

I expected a creature feature or paranormal film experience, instead I got a non-cliche story. This impressed me and made it easier to indulge into the story.

Without spoiling the film, the plot is that a mother suspects that her son was traded in with an identical imposter of some type. Let's just say the entity in this film is a doppelgänger of sorts. To my surprise the movie had nothing to do with the sinkhole at all, but what came out of it.

Some of the story does have holes and lacks a lot of background. Despite this it wasn't that terrible of a film at all. It was actually a lot better than I had expected and landed midrange on my scale at a 6/10.

Very atmospheric horror film with sharp, artistic editing. Decent overall acting. Creepy contortions, some jump scares.

Perhaps there is not much groundbreaking or unexpected, but not much glaring to criticize either. Except for some loose ends, some threads that intrigued but never went anywhere (the father? The other little boy?). And one climatic scene that was hard to see (literally in a pitch black cave) what was going on so i felt a bit lost, and the scene lasted a while.

While this horror film is fairly obvious and familiar, despite being in Ireland, I still found myself immersed and a bit creeped out. I wish the climax was stronger and pulled all the threads together. The ending subsequently lost impact but was not bad.