The Horror Show
The Hole in the Ground
Lee Cronin
Set in rural Ireland, The Hole in the Ground is a story with an anguished single mom at its center and a haunted little boy.
Writer-director, Lee Cronin, opens his story with Sarah (Seána Kerslake) driving her elementary-school-age son, Chris (James Quinn Markey), to a remote home in the countryside. After a failed relationship with Chris’s abusive father, it is her only chance to move on and make a fresh start for the both of them.
After several struggles linked to adapting to this new way of living, Chris goes missing and Sarah begins to worry he has been abducted by his abusive father or fallen into a sinkhole in the woods. When Chris turns up unharmed, his mother starts to notice changes in his behaviour and questions whether the boy is actually… her boy.
To highlight the story’s dark side, Cronin makes everyday settings seem very sinister. And for the story’s sake, it is always a valuable time-killer to take a few intriguing eerie detours while covering a rather oversized territory such as the supernatural genre. From the casting side, Kerslake is a likeable screen presence and gives a rather emotional performance as the distressed mother.
Without a doubt, Cronin made a solid effort to show that he can direct and write horror. A few creepy elements attest to his effort to make us horror fans happy, however, he doesn’t manage to deliver enough scares in order to keep catching the viewer by surprise.
It takes a little more than a few creepy faces and lukewarm eerie events for The Hole in the Ground to engage us viewers, let alone stand out. A fairly decent attempt to be an enjoyable paranormal horror, The Hole in the Ground is probably doomed to a limited shelf-life, but in any case, it can be an alright time-killer.
Maria Kriva, HMS
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