The mechanics of the abductions are not believable. John is a scrawny kid who probably weighs a hundred pounds soaking wet. We see him dragging his father and using a wheelbarrow. But no explanation of how he put three adults down a thirty-foot hole. His reason for the family's disappearance would not be accepted by any rational adult, especially when the other characters know his parents. The premise, as depicted, does not hold water. What rich family would leave a giant hole on their property? Willing suspension of disbelief can only go so far.
The darkly inquisitive teen decides to trap his family in a hole in the woods, and begins to follow his every whim. Yet the film's title also takes on another meaning, as John can never quite fill the hole that's in his life, even with his newfound independence. The movie has a highly unusual plot, and, evidently, its ending is just as odd and off-putting as everything else.
Perhaps the weirdest part of John and the Hole is that the film doesn't answer any of the questions it poses. It never truly reveals why John trapped his family in the hole -- whether he was angry with them or just wanted them out of the way. On the flip side, perhaps his family realized their role in pushing John into what he did. Or maybe they felt sorry for him after finding him in the pool. For that matter, it was probably better to pretend like nothing ever happened. Regardless, the film's ending puts everything back where it started -- monotony once again rules, and everything is empty and routine.
We go to movies to experience lives unlike our own, like, for example: what would happen if John found a hole? The haunting indie John and the Hole, directed by Pascual Sisto, has left audiences reeling with its bizarre ending.
It's baffling at first when John begins to execute his plan, looting his parents' medicine cabinet to find sleeping pills, which he tests out on himself before administering on the house gardener. Then it all becomes clear, as his parents and sister (Taissa Farmiga, giving great face the whole film) drop down in fatigue after dinner, and John begins to drag their sleeping bodies out to the hole one at a time. They wake up just as baffled as us, horrified at being trapped in this dank, filthy hole and anxious that John is missing, until John appears at the edge to silently stare down at them. "He did it," John's sister Laurie realizes, Anna instantly flying to John's defense while Brad flies into a rage. But none of their pleading or berating affects John, who only silently returns to throw them a bag of fast food.
John and the Hole operates in an airless space, withholding the audience completely from John's thoughts and motivations, instead keeping us as in the dark as his family are for much of the film. It's aided by the film's claustrophobic 4:3 aspect ratio and Dutch cinematographer Paul ÃzgÃr's use of either wide shots or intense close-ups with a long lens, emulating that feeling of being boxed into a hole. The audience is left to wonder alongside John's family: Did they mistreat him? Did someone make him do this? The closest thing that Anna can think of is an "odd" conversation she had with John shortly before, when he asked her what it was like to be an adult. Unable to give him a nice answer, she told him truthfully, "It's like being a kid with more responsibilities...I don't think he liked that. I think he was disappointed."
Parents need to know that John and the Hole is based on screenwriter-author NicolÃs Giacobone's short story "El Pozo," about a 13-year-old boy (Charlie Shotwell) who traps his parents and older sister in a 20-foot hole for no discernable reason. The movie is creepy (the main character seems like a sociopath) but doesn't include any gory violence -- just people who are knocked out after being unknowingly sedated and then waking up in traumatic circumstances. Expect lots of strong language, particularly when John and his friend play online video games (dozens of "f--k"s and variations on the same word). In a couple of scenes, adults drink wine with meals, and eventually John does, too, since he's alone and can do as he wants. The movie focuses on a White, wealthy family, and it's such a small cast that there are no diverse supporting characters.
In JOHN AND THE HOLE, the title spells out the plot: A 13-year-old boy decides to sedate his wealthy parents and older sister and then traps them in an unfinished underground fall-out shelter he discovers in the woods of a neighboring property. John (Charlie Shotwell) finds the hole while retrieving his drone that's stuck in a tree. One day, he uses some of his mother's (Jennifer Ehle) prescription drugs to knock out the family's landscaper and, as a make-good, puts some cash in the man's pocket. In the evening after dinner, it's clear that John's mom, dad (Michael C. Hall), and sister (Taissa Farmiga) are also unconscious; he transfers them to the hole. The family wakes up in shock at their surroundings, having no idea how they ended up there until John shows up -- not to rescue them or call an ambulance, but to drop down a bag of bare necessities (chicken nuggets and water). Free to do what he wants with his parents' considerable means, John teaches himself to drive, buys electronics and junk food, and invites his long-distance best (gaming) friend to visit from another town. Meanwhile, John' family grows panicky, hungry, and resigned to their uncertain fate.
This isn't a film that delves into motivation, diagnoses, or revelations. In the hole, the family has no secrets to share, no "ta da!" twists. Sisto and Giacobone aren't concerned with anything so overt. Adulthood, as experienced by John, is an exercise in privilege. His father's ATM code grants him access to $750,000+ in savings that he uses to pay for all of his wants: chicken nuggets, a huge gaming television, and the money to give his best friend cash as a thank you. There's a recurring theme about death (John tries to drown himself just to the point of experiencing something otherworldly without dying) and growing up, but, really, this is logic-defying (how did a lanky young teen have the strength to deposit his family in the hole without breaking their bones, or at the very least waking them up?). Although Sisto shows promise, this is an underwhelming film that can't live up to its premise.
The coming-of-age psychological thriller plays out the unsettling reality of a child who holds his family captive in a hole in the ground, and stars Charlie Shotwell, Michael C Hall, Jennifer Ehle, and Taissa Farmiga.
Not to kill a dead horse, but the filmmakers took a delightfully dark film with an interesting insoluble dilemma and brought in an additional storyline that ended up tainting the whole with a bitter aftertaste. Again, what a pity.
Pascual Sisto's "John and the Hole" might be one of the movies from the Sundance Film Festival that sticks with audiences the most. John has been treated like a baby for so long that he's had enough, and apparently the only way to show his family is to really torture them. The scenes where he lingers over the hole and stares down at them, often holding food, water and clothing, send chills down one's spine. It really makes you wonder if a child could really do something like this.
There's also another story in this film that draws confusion and raises even more questions. A mother and her daughter, Lily, are home, and she begins to tell her daughter the story of John and the hole. The next time we see them, the mother is telling the daughter she is leaving and never coming back. She has left her enough money to pay rent for almost a year, if she's responsible with the money. Lily is begging her mother to go with her, but her mother is insistent that she's big enough to be on her own (Lily is only 12-years-old). The final shot of the film shows Lily walking through a wooded area (maybe the same one where John's story takes place) and passing some type of structure.
If only this narrative, and the underlying theme of how a family can ignore all the signs of malice fermenting in their own, was what John and the Hole concentrated on throughout. Instead, Sisto cuts to the less-convincing plight of the family members stuck in the titular hole, and the sporadic inserts of a mother telling her daughter the story of John and the hole like it's a fairytale. The family story (much as Ehle, Farmiga, and Hall try to give it life) feels too stylized to mesh with the bleak naturalism of Shotwell's story. As for exactly what the third plot has to do with anything, that's a complete mystery, a dead end that adds nothing as the narrative peters out. Sisto's direction is a victory of glacial tone over actual content, and John and the Hole's frustrations outweigh its insight into the forces that can spawn a monster.
It takes a while, but when John finally drugs his family and puts them in the hole (an abandoned, partially completed bunker on a nearby property), you expect things to pick up. I mean, this is where the thrills should happen, right?
Overall, John and the Hole disappointed. Maybe if you can dig deep enough to find the right thematic resonance, the film will pay off for you. This movie made me bored, but not bored enough to dig that hole myself.
By putting his family in the hole, John makes the hole his normal life and the outside his hole, where he evolves. Just a little. But in the way I imagine most boys (and perhaps girls and perhaps all flavors of gender) experience, if not for a day or two, for a period in their lives.
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