Previously posted on blog and written by B. Demeter
Have you ever watched a movie that for some unknown reason sticks in your memory?
It wasn’t a particularly great film and you can’t quite put your finger on why it pops up in your brain from time to time; but there it is. Taking up valuable memory space. Like, I’ll never remember all of my co-workers names but I’ll take the plot of “The Hole” (2009) to the grave.
I watched “The Hole” a long while ago. With all due respect, it plays like a 90 minute “Are You Afraid of the Dark” episode. Kids are the man protagonists and there is no gore. Brothers Dane and Lucas move with their mother into a house in the suburbs. They, along with next-door neighbor Julie, discover a heavily secured door to a bottomless hole in the basement. In order to make the movie interesting, they decide to open it.
After that spooky shit starts happening. Julie encounters a creepy little girl in a bathroom, Lucas is attacked by a Chucky-wannabe jester doll, and Dane is haunted by what we’ll eventually discover is the specter of his abusive father.
If this movie were a file on my brain, the icon would be a picture from the scene of Julie and the ghost girl in the bathroom. It is super mega eerie. The girl does this stutter step that is unlike any other herky-jerky motion I’ve seen. She does it again later in the movie when she is crawling towards the hole.
They seek out the house’s pervious owner, played by ‘that guy’ extraordinaire Bruce Dern, who is now a crazed hobbit living in an abandoned factory surrounding himself with hundreds of lamps and lights. He berates them for letting the darkness out and harbinger-izes that they are all going to die.
It is a legitimate scary movie. Tension and story are high, jump scares and CGI effects are low. “The Hole” is horror movie bedrock. Sure, there are scarier movies out there but few are as satisfying. As someone who watches movies with a keen eye for ripping them a part, I couldn’t find much about this movie to rip.
After watching “The Hole” again, I’m sort of glad that it is taking up hard drive space in my brain. As I said, it plays like a feature length AYAotD, so be prepared for an uplifting ending. I highly suggest watching this movie. It’s a solid Halloween time film.
And I’d like to take a moment to apologize to anyone who read this review expecting it to be about “The Hole” (2001). I’ve seen that movie too and it also permanently stuck in my head for a different reason. Mainly Keira Knightley flashing her boobies.
Comments