SummarySarah and her young son Chris move to a new home in the Irish countryside, next to a forest that hides an enormous sinkhole. One night, Chris vanishes, and when he reappears he seems unharmed and unchanged. But, as his behavior grows increasingly disturbing, Sarah begins to fear that the boy who has returned may not be her son at all.
Directed By:Lee Cronin
Written By:Lee Cronin, Stephen Shields
The Hole in the Ground
Metascore
Generally Favorable
63
User score
Mixed or Average
5.4
My Score
Drag or tap to give a rating
Hover and click to give a rating
Not available in your country?
ExpressVPN
Get 3 Extra months free
$6.67/mth
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
63
56% Positive
9 Reviews
9 Reviews
44% Mixed
7 Reviews
7 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Feb 28, 2019
80
It always finds new, invariably cinematic ways to nudge us towards its final leap into the abyss. Cronin feels like a real find for our especially insecure moment.
Feb 2, 2019
70
There’s a freshness to the characterisations, a good eye, and for a time Cronin constructs a tense guessing game as to whether it’s mental breakdown or supernatural forces at play.
User score
Mixed or Average
5.4
36% Positive
18 Ratings
18 Ratings
48% Mixed
24 Ratings
24 Ratings
16% Negative
8 Ratings
8 Ratings
Aug 26, 2024
10
One of the best directed movies with talented actors that I have seen I a while.
Mar 24, 2020
8
Soooooooo creepy. The movie features on a single young mother who gets a desolate new house in Ireland with her young son. One day while jogging in the woods she discovers a giant hole in the ground and advises her son to not go out by himself. If course he does and when he comes back he's not the same. It's little things at first, slight mb mannerisms and the way he reacts to spiders and other kids he used to hate. But as things get increasingly strange she decides to confront him with truly terrifying consequences. The movie is a slow burn to be sure but it's very well done and undoubtedly suspenseful. It all leads up to a nightmarish finale that's worth the wait. Fine performances and confident direction highlight this great piece of genre. 4/5
Feb 2, 2019
70
The Hole In the Ground surprised me, took me on a fun ride, and returned me, almost unshaken. This was a brilliantly satisfying monster movie.
Feb 26, 2019
67
Parental anxiety has long been fertile ground for horror, going back to "The Bad Seed" and "The Exorcist," and The Hole In The Ground finds a somewhat fresh angle on the possessed-kid subgenre.
Feb 28, 2019
60
Somewhere in the specifics of Cronin’s is-he-or-isn’t-he scenario – played with gripping detail by Kerslake and Markey – there’s a decent little midnight chiller.
Feb 4, 2019
58
Even as an homage The Hole in the Ground feels like business as usual rather imbuing the genre with a much-needed modern edge or new context.
Jan 29, 2019
50
This is a story that errs toward the familiar instead of embracing strangeness, its freaky kid becoming the distraction when you just want more time with the hole in the ground.
Nov 30, 2021
7
For the most part, the tale holds up well. At points, it appears to be veering towards the tired trope of "is the horror real or in the mind of the pill-popping primary character," and we wonder whether Chris has been taken over by an evil entity.
Oct 3, 2024
6
A pleasant, simple, and slowly told spooky tale—essentially a decelerated form of horror. That doesn't mean it doesn't have its handful of escalations, whether it's due to the strange woman in the woods or the creepiest child in a horror film in quite some time.🪞 Cynical souls might point out that Cronin's Irish folk horror is little more than a string of elements borrowed from THE BABADOOK, THE SHINING, and ORPHAN, or just a new episode of LORE. I, on the other hand, had a good time, even if I briefly dozed off at some point.
Jul 4, 2021
6
This movie was... just okay. It had it's brief moments that kept me on the edge of my seat, but the ending was a bit ridiculous. First of all, what I'd like to know is how in the hell did that woman manage to get herself out of that hole.... whilst carrying her kid!?
Jan 18, 2020
1
(Mauro Lanari)
"Psycho", "Dark Water" (Nakata, 2002; remake of Salles, 2005), "Changeling" (Eastwood, 2008), "Enemy" (Villeneuve, 2013), "The Babadook" (Kent, 2014), "Mother!" (Aronofsky, 2017), "Stranger Things" with Winona Ryder on the hunt for her son Will Byers? More than those, "Tully" (Reitman, 2018) in horror form: an abysmal depression (the "hole") up to dissociative identity disorder, ergo: little logic, very little budget, zero originality. To the delight of the beginners pampered by Sundance.
Production Company:
- Savage Productions
- Wild Atlantic Pictures
- A24
- Bankside Films
- Head Gear Films
- Metrol Technology
- Suomen Elokuvasäätiö
- Wrong Men North
Release Date:Mar 1, 2019
Duration:1 h 30 m
Rating:R
Tagline:Fear the Familiar.
Awards
Irish Film and Television Awards
• 7 Nominations
Festival Européen du Film Fantastique de Strasbourg (FEFFS)
• 2 Nominations
Fant, Bilbao Fantasy Film Festival
• 1 Win & 1 Nomination
