The Hole in the Ground

Movies involving evil or mean children often manage to creep us out the most for some reason. The Hole in the Ground is no exception. It's a small Irish production with only a few characters, but it manages to pull off a very chilling atmosphere of dread, after a mother and her son moves into their new house in a deserted area on the edge of a large dense forest. The movie really manages to make you feel their sense of loneliness as the mother stumbles upon a mysterious huge hole in the middle of the forest behind their house. Her boy begins to acts strange after he runs away one night in the forest, and she starts questioning his identity and also, her sanity. The actress playing the mother is very good at displaying her mixed emotions and the boy really conveys a feeling of unpleasantness. This coupled with the creepy atmosphere really pulls you in. It's more of a drama-psychological horror and not everyone will appreciate the slow and subtle tone of the movie, but if you enjoyed smart horror like Under the Shadow and Goodnight Mommy, then I think you will like this. It's not quite as good and it unfortunately lacks a little bit of explanation at the end, but sometimes I think it's okay for movie to leave a bit up to the viewers to figure out by themselves. I just wish it ran maybe 10 minutes longer to better develop the events leading to the conclusion.

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.

There's nothing really wrong with this movie, fine performances from the cast, soundtrack ok and some nice cinematography. The problem for me was I got bored,adding up the best moments amounted to about 15 minutes of movie and them moments are really good some real cool imagery, I normally enjoy slow Burners but in this case I was just bored.Shame.

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.

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.