11 of 31 Horror Films I've Never Seen: The Hole (2009)

I've always had a soft spot for the films of Joe Dante.  As a child I grew up with the Gremlins films and later in high school I found the greatest Werewolf film of all time The Howling.  Over the years I've slowly been watching his other films and while they don't completely hit the mark the way that Gremlins and The Howling did they still get under my skin a little bit.  Among his more recent works is The Hole, an example of a great concept that is marred by pretty poor acting.

The story, simply put, is about two brothers who have moved into a new house with their mother and discover a strange hole in the basement with their neighbor.  After opening the trap door and staring into the hole increasingly strange things start to happen to them.  It becomes increasingly clear that they have to solve the mystery of the hole or suffer the consequences.

The film is kind of like a spiritual cousin to The Burbs, another film of Dante's set in a small town suburbia and like it and others in Dante's career it has a very dark sense of humor.  This film however, feels a little bit more like a scary kids film.  It skirts the line between adult and childishness often in ways that caused the overall feeling of the film to fall flat.  Nathan Gamble, as younger brother Lucas, is really the only interesting one to watch as Chris Massoglia and Haley Bennett's performances both felt wooden and lacked the expressiveness that one usually finds in Dante's films.  The "scare" sequences too felt lacking; not necessarily bad, just lacking.  The blend of danger and humor that is present in Gremlins or The Burbs wasn't quite there.

The overall look of the film was on point, but unfortunately it didn't save it from the bland acting and toned down style.  As I stated before, the overall feeling of the film was that it was trying to be more kid friendly.  The scares were dumbed down and the acting was dumbed down which made the film lose it's sense of urgency that started to build once the centerpiece, The Hole, is discovered.  All in all, it was disappointing for me, but perhaps a younger audience could enjoy it as an entry level horror film.  As for me?  I was thrown in the deep end as a child when I stayed up on Halloween to see Fluffy the Crate Monster (Creepshow) ripping a man's throat out so my expectations are a bit higher.  It's never fun to give a low grade to a filmmaker you admire, but even Bruce Dern's cameo couldn't save this one.