The Hole in the Ground review: A psychological horror film that leaves you wanting to come up for air

The lines between what is real and what is imagined are so blurred that the film becomes hard to follow

Geoffrey Macnab
Thursday 28 February 2019 10:23 GMT
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The Hole in the Ground - trailer

Dir: Lee Cronin; Starring: Seána Kerslake, James Quinn Markey, Simone Kirby, Steve Wall, Eoin Macken, Sarah Hanly. Cert 15, 90 mins

Lee Cronin’s The Hole in the Ground is as murky as its title suggests. It’s a psychological horror film in which the writer-director leaves it up to us to work out whether there really is a gigantic, muddy sinkhole in the woods or whether it’s something conjured up in the imagination of the film’s increasingly stressed heroine, single mum Sarah (Seána Kerslake).

Sarah has just moved to the outskirts of a new town somewhere in rural Ireland. She is living with her eight-year-old son, Chris (James Quinn Markey) in a house full of spiders. Chris is a sensitive boy, wary of his new school where he hasn’t yet made any friends, and with a bad case of arachnophobia. His father is nowhere to be seen when the spiders need to be squashed.

Eerie and unsettling: Kati Outinen makes for a creepy neighbour

Cronin makes everyday settings seem very sinister. Strident music and the occasional use of slow motion add to the dreamlike effect. Sarah and Chris can’t even go for a drive without a sinister figure appearing out of nowhere and causing them to crash. There is talk of a crazy old lady who lives up in the hills. Chris has a strange habit of scarpering away into a forest behind the house. The more troubling his behaviour, the more Sarah frets – and the more neurotic she becomes in turn. The doctor prescribes her pills which only serve to make her yet more strung out. Soon, she becomes convinced that the little boy living with her isn’t her son at all, but some evil creature that has taken over his body. As a mother, she knows that he is “not himself”.

One unexpected treat here is a cameo from the great Finnish actress, Kati Outinen (the deadpan, Olive Oyl-like star of many of Aki Kauirsmaki’s films), as Sarah’s even stranger neighbour. Noreen, who has lost her son, likes to stand in the middle of the road and roll her eyeballs. She is very creepy indeed, especially when she is banging her head against a car window.

Kerslake gives an intriguing performance as the mother. We are never sure whether she is in such a vulnerable, emotional condition that she has become a threat to her child – or whether her child really is the demonic presence she fears. She is a likeable screen presence who seems level-headed at first but whose behaviour becomes as erratic as that of the mad neighbour.

The hole in the ground behind the house isn’t just a small opening in the earth. It’s an enormous crater which makes it look as if a meteor has landed or a bomb exploded.

Sarah can’t trust her own senses. At the school talent show, she is traumatised by her son’s performance. She is convinced he is an imposter and even goes as far as to hide a camera in the wall so she can record him.

At times, the film is eerie and unsettling. Seemingly grounded and sympathetic characters, for example Nora’s genial and patient husband, Des (James Cosmo), will suddenly behave in an angry and aggressive fashion. James Quinn Markey is effective as the child, sweet-natured and innocent one moment and then aloof, diabolic and with superhuman powers the next.

The drawback is that the lines between what is real here and what is imagined are so blurred that the film becomes hard to follow. You’re not sure whether The Hole in the Ground is a case study of a mentally deranged mother or a horror film in which events should be taken literally. Whatever the case, it leaves you wanting to come up for air.

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