The Hole (2009)

A pair of brothers stumble upon a mysterious hole in their basement that leads to the darkest corridors of their fears and nightmares. The Hole is directed by Joe Dante the man behind classics such as Gremlins and Gremlins 2 unfortunately tho this movie wasn't as good as i expected it to be plus the whole film felt to me kinda lost since it didn't know what it really wanted to be. Was it an adventure? a comedy? a sci-fi? or a horror flick? Cause it was neither thrilling or scary enough to say so for sure. The acting was good but the story? Was disappointing. (5/10)

I was at a Q&A with the director Joe Dante and the topic of this movie came up. Its clear that this film has been missed by many due to its lack of distribution. However its well worth your time if you can track it down. Its basically a teen psychological horror which has themes from a number of 80s horrors like IT, Puppetmaster, The Gate and Paperhouse. It was originally a 3D movie however its still watchable in 2D. Theres a few old faces from previous Dante movies although the rest of cast may be new to you but they all do a great job. I'd recommend this as a family/teen fun horror that wont give the kids nightmares.....unless they have a thing about clowns.

Kind of normal horror theme. Kids find and accidently released a ancient horror that hunts them. Its ok. The thing I found stupid in this movie was the old man Carl. He had lived at the house with the hatch and had locked it. Then he kinds of leave it like that moves away to adifferent part of the city. He dont really hides the hatch and leaves the keys in a box just next to the hatch. He is then angry at the kids for opening the hatch and blame them for releasing the evil. This part is kind of stupid and feel like a cheap way to get the story to start. This made me lose interest in the rest of the movie when I was seeing it.

The Hole took years to find a US distributor, which Dante attributes to a saturated 3D market - where his small film never had a chance, but regardless of what dimension it's playing in, it's not very good. It feels like it's made for television and looks cheap and the over lit digital cinematography murders any atmosphere. Chris Massoglia is an unappealing lead and is out shined by the young Nathan Gamble. The film would have probably worked better if the leads were both around 10 years old, as an older teen keeping the plot of the movie away from his mom is too silly. Here and there The Hole ratchets up a few scenes of tension, but the last act suffers from a rushed 'face your fears' end and the results are hokey and about as frightening as a Goosebumps episode. Not a good return to the director's chair for Dante.