''The Hole'' is a 2009 American 3D
dark fantasy
Dark fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy literary, artistic, and cinematic works that incorporate disturbing and frightening themes of fantasy. It often combines fantasy with elements of horror or has a gloomy dark tone or a sense of horror and dr ...
horror film
Horror is a film genre that seeks to elicit fear or disgust in its audience for entertainment purposes.
Horror films often explore dark subject matter and may deal with transgressive topics or themes. Broad elements include monsters, apoca ...
directed by
Joe Dante
Joseph James Dante Jr. (; born November 28, 1946) is an American film director, producer, editor and actor. His films—notably ''Gremlins'' (1984) alongside its sequel, '' Gremlins 2: The New Batch'' (1990)—often mix 1950s-style B movies wit ...
and starring
Chris Massoglia
Christopher Paul Massoglia (born March 29, 1992) is an American television and motion picture actor, and a city council member for Blaine Minnesota's 3rd Ward.
Early life
Chris Massoglia was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Christopher and Kar ...
,
Haley Bennett
Haley Loraine Keeling (born January 7, 1988), known professionally as Haley Bennett, is an American actress. She made her film debut in the romantic comedy '' Music and Lyrics'' (2007) and has since appeared in films such as '' The Equalizer'' ( ...
,
Nathan Gamble
Nathan Gamble (born January 12, 1998) is an American actor who made his feature film debut in '' Babel'' (2006), for which he was nominated for a 2007 Young Artist Award. He is best known for his role as Sawyer Nelson in ''Dolphin Tale'' and the ...
,
Bruce Dern
Bruce MacLeish Dern (born June 4, 1936) is an American actor. He has often played supporting villainous characters of unstable natures. He has received several accolades, including the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor and the Silver B ...
, and
Teri Polo
Theresa Elizabeth Polo (born June 1, 1969) is an American actress. She starred as Pam Byrnes-Focker in the ''Meet the Parents'' trilogy and played the role of police officer Stef Adams Foster in the Freeform series '' The Fosters'' (2013–201 ...
. The film follows Dane and Lucas Thompson, two brothers who move into their new house in Bensenville with their single mother, Susan. While settling in their new home, Dane and Lucas, along with their new neighbor, Julie Campbell, discover a trap door in the basement, leading to a bottomless pit and, upon opening it, accidentally unleash a supernatural force that manifests itself into any fear of the person who looks into the hole.
Plot
Seventeen-year-old Dane Thompson, his 10-year-old brother, Lucas, and their mother, Susan, move from
Brooklyn
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
to the quiet town of
Bensenville
Bensenville is a village located near O'Hare International Airport in DuPage County, Illinois, with a portion of the town in Cook County. As of the 2020 census, the village population was 18,813.
First known as Tioga, it was formally established ...
where Dane and Lucas befriend their next door neighbor, Julie Campbell. While exploring their new home, Dane and Lucas discover a trapdoor with several locks along each side in the basement. Opening the trapdoor reveals a hole which appears to be bottomless.
Over the next few days, each child experiences strange events. Lucas, having a
fear of clowns
''Fear of Clowns'' is a 2004 horror film written and directed by Kevin Kangas. The film centres on an artist who is struggling with a hostile spouse and becomes the object of a mentally disturbed clown. It was followed by a 2007 sequel entitled ' ...
, discovers a
jester
A jester, court jester, fool or joker was a member of the household of a nobleman or a monarch employed to entertain guests during the medieval and Renaissance eras. Jesters were also itinerant performers who entertained common folk at fairs and ...
puppet on his bed, as well as other locations, as if it is following him. Julie begins to see an injured girl who bleeds from her eyes. Dane starts to see shadowy figures of a large man. Eventually, all three witness the injured girl together at the boys' home where they follow her to the basement and watch as she crawls into the hole.
Julie suggests they seek help from the previous owner of the house, Creepy Carl, who now lives in an abandoned glove factory surrounded by hundreds of lights and lamps. When the kids tell him that they have opened the hole, he berates them for releasing the evil inside stating that it will come for them and kill Dane. Later that night, Carl is seen scribbling in a sketchbook, almost blacking out entire pages. Carl screams, "I'm not done yet!" as the light bulbs around him pop.
The sketchbook turns out to belong to Dane, who returns to the factory to retrieve it. He finds his sketchbook in the darkness; Creepy Carl is gone. Julie decides to get the group relaxed and invites them to swim in her pool. While under the water, Dane sees a shadowy figure of a giant man standing above. Once out of the pool, he notices a trail of muddy footprints which he and Julie follow, leaving Lucas alone in the pool. They hear Julie's pet dog, Charlie, barking and return to see Lucas drowning. Lucas tells them that the jester puppet had pulled him under.
Later that night, while Lucas is asleep, Dane sees a hand-shaped bruise on Lucas's leg. He discovers that it is identical to a hand that Creepy Carl had drawn in the sketchbook. As he flips through the sketchbook, he realizes that each page is a puzzle piece. While working on the puzzle, Dane hears someone whistling. When he walks into the kitchen, he sees an envelope addressed to him from the New Jersey State Penitentiary. A note inside reads 'HELLO BOY'. He rushes upstairs to Lucas and tells him that someone is in the house. While Dane investigates, Lucas meets a police officer standing at the bottom of the stairs. The officer shows Lucas a picture of two little girls and asks if he has seen one of them and points to the girl whom Julie first encountered. The police officer leaves the picture with Lucas and turns to leave revealing the back of his head is missing. Lucas fetches Dane and the pair watch the cop return to the basement and climb into the hole.
Next door, the girl then appears in Julie's room. Julie climbs out of her window and meets the boys where she reveals to Dane that she and her best friend, Annie Smith, were playing on the tracks of an old roller coaster which resulted in an accident where Annie fell to her death. In an attempt to help Julie, a police officer also ended up falling to his death. She decides to return to the amusement park where the accident occurred; Dane goes after her, leaving Lucas on his own.
Julie finds her friend sitting on the same spot from which she fell. After Julie helps Annie understand that she had tried to save her, Annie disappears and is pleased that Julie is no longer scared. Meanwhile, Lucas hears Dane calling him to the basement. Confused, he follows the voice to discover the jester puppet mimicking Dane's voice. The puppet attacks Lucas, but is outwitted and eventually destroyed. Dane and Julie return and Lucas announces that he is no longer afraid of clowns. Dane then tells them of a theory that once you look into the hole, it somehow knows you and creates whatever you are afraid of. When asked what he is afraid of, Dane replies that he is not afraid of anything.
Julie then invites Dane and Lucas to stay at her place for the night. As Lucas is gathering his things, Dane shows Julie the puzzle he had been working on. They solve the puzzle together and see a boy being grabbed by a giant man. Dane rushes upstairs to find that Lucas is gone. Dane finally reveals that he is afraid of his father, who had abused the entire family and is now in prison. Realizing that his father has taken Lucas into the hole, Dane jumps into the hole as well.
Dane finds Lucas hiding in the closet of a twisted version of their old home. Their father, who has become a giant, discovers them and starts to break through the door. They turn around and discover the shelving seems to be a ladder. Dane tells Lucas to start climbing. Dane starts to follow, until his father drags him back down. As Dane fights him off, the giant father slowly returns to his actual size as Dane starts to confront his fear, seeing him for what he really is. Their surroundings begin to crumble and the floor falls away leaving Dane and his father trapped on an island under a ceiling fan. Having taken his father's belt, Dane pulls himself onto the fan and gives the crumbling floor one final blow with the belt buckle causing the floor to break apart and the father to fall.
Dane emerges from the hole where Julie and Lucas are waiting. They close the hole, just as their mother comes down to the basement. She sees the trapdoor and opens it, revealing a shallow crawl space below. As the group heads upstairs, Lucas asks his mom if she is afraid of anything. She replies that she was afraid of a monster under her bed when she was a little girl. Lucas says, "Uh oh," as the trapdoor blows open again revealing the darkness has returned.
In the post-credits, the jester puppet is shown winking his left eye.
Cast
Production
The film began shooting in
3D on December 5, 2008, in Vancouver, Canada.
Release
''The Hole'' had its world premiere at the
66th Venice International Film Festival
The 66th annual Venice International Film Festival, held in Venice, Italy, was held from 2 to 12 September 2009, with Maria Grazia Cucinotta serving as the festival's hostess. The opening film of the festival was '' Baarìa'' by Giuseppe Torn ...
on September 11, 2009. It was screened at the
2009 Toronto International Film Festival
The 34th annual Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) was held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada between September 10 and September 19, 2009. The opening night gala presented the Charles Darwin biography ''Creation''. ''The Young Victoria'', based ...
the following day, and later at the
2010 Cannes Film Festival
The 63rd Cannes Film Festival was held from 12 to 23 May 2010, in Cannes, France. The Cannes Film Festival, hailed as being one of the most recognized and prestigious film festivals worldwide, was founded in 1946. It consists of having films scr ...
.
The film was first released theatrically in Thailand on May 5, 2010.
It had its United States debut screening at the
Castro Theatre in San Francisco on October 7, 2011. ''The Hole'' was released in 3D in select theatres in Los Angeles and Atlanta on September 28, 2012, and was made available on
DVD
The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...
,
Blu-ray
The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of sto ...
, and
video on demand
Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos without a traditional video playback device and the constraints of a typical static broadcasting schedule. In the 20th century, broadcasting in the form of o ...
(VOD) on October 2, 2012.
Reception
The film garnered positive reviews from critics. Film review aggregator
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
reports that 81% of critics gave the film a positive review, based on 36 reviews, with a rating average of 6.4 out of 10. The site's consensus reads, "A welcome throwback to the suburban teen thrillers of the 1980s, ''The Hole'' is a scary, enjoyable return to form for director Joe Dante."
References
External links
*
*
Interview with director Joe Dante
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hole, The
2009 films
2009 horror films
2009 independent films
2009 3D films
2000s horror thriller films
2000s teen fantasy films
2000s teen horror films
American 3D films
American horror thriller films
American independent films
American teen horror films
Bold Films films
American dark fantasy films
American fantasy thriller films
Fictional dolls and dummies
Films directed by Joe Dante
Films scored by Javier Navarrete
Films shot in Vancouver
Teen thriller films
2000s English-language films
2000s American films