The Hole in the Ground (2019), directed by Lee Cronin; starring Seana Kerslake, James Quinn Markey, Kati Outinen, and James Cosmo.
The Hole in the Ground is a joint Irish-Finnish film co-produced by A24, which brought us last year's Hereditary and The Witch (2015). It got a lot of attention at the Sundance Film Festival in January/February.
The good news is that this film has a fairly innovative plot -- for a low-budget, indie horror movie. The bad news is that the way the plot unfolds is riddled with tropes and cliches. It’s got creepy kids, creepy old folks, and that common-as-dirt-scene where something scary happens to the main character and then she bolts upright in bed and realizes that it was all a dream! As if we’ve never seen that one before (digital eye roll). And, although most of the cinematography by Tom Comerford is excellent, he does overuse that chilly, gray-blue filter that has appeared in countless horror films over the last decade. In addition, Cronin shows us an old, dark house that features the usual creaking floorboards, rusty door hinges, and junk-filled basement full of possible disturbing terrors.
That said, when The Hole in the Ground brings it, it really brings it. There’s a scene involving the main character peering through a keyhole that will stick with viewers pretty much forever. And another chiller that recalls both The Descent (2005) and Peter Weir’s spooky apocalyptic thriller, The Last Wave (1977). However, these momentary gems are unfortunately drowned out by a torrential downpour of cliches.
Getting Underway
Irish actress Seana Kerslake plays Sarah, a stressed-out single mother in Ireland, who has a troubled past and is living in isolated circumstances—a premise that recalls other recent psychological horror films like The Babadook (2014) and Under the Shadow (2016).
The film opens with Sarah and her son, Chris (James Quinn Markey), traipsing through the hall of mirrors at a decrepit amusement park. Later, when they leave the park, we see that their battered SUV is the only vehicle in the parking lot. This sets the scene for what is coming later, as mirrors and isolation are both very important themes in this film.
Next we see Sarah and Chris moving to a small rural town on the edge of a deep, dark forest. There’s some conversation involving Chris’s father, which suggests that he was a domestic abuser; Sarah has a nasty gash on her forehead that's still healing. As they approach their new house, they almost hit a crazy, nasty-looking elderly woman standing in the middle of the road. We find out later that the woman is Mrs. Brady, Sarah’s new neighbor, who has a back story that provides important clues about the unfolding plot.
One afternoon after moving into their new house, Chris has an argument with Sarah, and runs off into the forest. She later finds him standing near a large, crater-like sinkhole surrounded by tall pines, and makes him promise to never go into the forest alone again. One night soon after, Chris disappears from his bed, and Sarah frantically searches the whole house, and then calls the police. He turns up suddenly and the police dismiss her as hysterical.
"Not Your Son!"
After this incident, Chris seems oddly changed. He goes from being a picky eater to a glutton. He doesn’t remember ordinary things about their life before they moved into the house. He also gives off a creepy air that little Markey is very good at portraying. The film features a couple of scenes where Chris slowly explores his mother’s face with his fingers, which are hair-raisingly icky.
Sarah learns more about the Bradys from her new boss, an antiques store owner. She is told that the old lady had a mental breakdown when she “accidentally” hit her son James with her car years ago and killed him. Before that, Mrs. Brady was under psychiatric treatment for believing that James was not really her son.
Sarah begins to experience more events that make her uneasy with the change in her son’s personality. Mrs. Brady tries to stop them in the road again, attacks their car, and begins screaming that Chris isn’t really Sarah’s son. Mr. Brady comes out and tries to smooth things over, but Sarah is angry and drives away. Later, when she comes back to apologize, she finds Mrs. Brady lying face down on the Brady’s lawn, dead, with her head buried in the ground.
Meanwhile, Sarah has begun to spy regularly on Chris and secretly plants a video camera in his bedroom. When she reviews the footage, she sees something that makes her think Mrs. Brady was right — Chris isn’t her son. He’s a changeling, just like the Brady’s son, James. (The audience doesn’t get to see what’s on the camera, a decison I'm not sure works.) She runs to Mr. Brady’s and shows him the camera, telling him that his wife wasn’t crazy about James. Mr. Brady won’t hear it, but he does explain that his wife kept mirrors all over the house to make sure that Mr. Brady was really himself. She believed she could see “the truth” about who he was in the mirrors.
Sarah has a confrontation with Chris in which he demonstrates super-strength powers, and she is now certain that Chris is a changeling—a creature from Irish folklore who steals children and replaces them as a doppelgänger. Her search for her real son leads her back to the mysterious sinkhole in the forest and a suspenseful climax in which she confronts what’s inside the sinkhole.
I won’t telegraph the ending, except to say that parts of it are clumsily handled. At one point, Sarah locks changeling Chris in the basement, yet he can’t get out -- even though we’ve just seen that he has super-strength powers. Also clumsily, the film plants the suggestion that Sarah is imagining things due to her fragile mental state and isolation, but this trope is not handled nearly as well as it was in The Babadook or Under the Shadow. Finally, The Hole moves along very slowly in the beginning, which may make some viewers lose patience. Nonetheless, director Lee Cronin, cinematographer Comerford, and creepy kid Markey are all potential talents to watch out for. The Hole in the Ground is currently streaming for free to Prime members on Amazon.
