31(ish) Horror Films in 31 Days: Day 6 - The Hole

I started with three straight first-watch film reviews and then followed it up with two recommendations of things I'd already seen. I refuse to fall to .500 on the year so I made sure today was a new one instead of just another recommendation. After all, a big reason behind this increasingly difficult endeavor was to watch more movies, especially horror movies. If I spend the whole month talking about past experiences I'll leave no time for new ones and negate the original purpose altogether.

It's not that I'm not enjoying the ride; I'm glad you small handful of people are actually taking the time to read these and I hope you get something out of it as well. It's just that, instead of using my recently-acquired slices of free time for lazing about and watching movies etc., I've just added to my to-do list and have, possibly, found myself with less free time than before. Some of us are just wired that way, I guess.

But who knows? Maybe I'll grow addicted to one-sided conversation and find other things to talk about after October comes to an end. Or perhaps I'll just smash my fingers with a hammer and force myself into early retirement.



Entry #6: The Hole

Some of you may not be familiar with Joe Dante by name but I'm willing to bet you're all big fans of at least one of his films. If you grew up during the 80s and didn't love Gremlins, Explorers or The 'Burbs, just stop reading this, walk down to your local mental institution and check yourself in. He also directed The Howling, Innerspace and segments of Twilight Zone: The Movie, Amazon Women on The Moon, and more recently, the Masters of Horror TV series. He's considered a horror veteran and justifiably so.

However, like many other horror veterans who earned their cred' during the 80's, arguably the greatest decade for horror films, he hasn't done much worth watching since. I find it hard to believe that the creators of all these great films just started sucking out of nowhere. I think the world just moved on and they became relics of a better time.

Still...since they have a passion for filmmaking, many of them continue to work. And as long as they do, I will continue to at least give their films a chance. Because, every once in a while, I'll stumble upon one that feels like those films from my childhood and, for ninety minutes, life seems just a little bit better. I'm sure you all know what I'm talking about.

Digression aside, I decided to give Dante's latest horror offering a chance.

For the first twenty minutes or so, I thought I might have stumbled upon one of those films I described above. It exuded a strong 80s horror vibe and felt like an amalgamation a few of Dante's earlier films. Other than a couple of fun cameos from Dante's earlier films it gradually evolved into something less. Something not worthy of the nostalgic juices that were flowing around in my temporal lobe.

Aside from those cameos, the most familiar name in the film is Teri Polo. She plays the mother of two boys and they have all recently moved from Brooklyn, New York to the small town of Bensonville, Whogivesashit. While arguing in the basement, the boys stumble across a many-padlocked door in the floor. After opening the door (SPOILER:: with keys that should have been destroyed instead of hidden in a nearby paint can...::END SPOILER) they find a hole in the ground that seems to have no bottom.

With the help of their next door neighbor, a young girl who the older brother has a crush on...of course...they set out to unravel the mystery of this hole. Soon after, things start getting weird for the trio and the film swaps its nostalgic outer coating for a more bland and predictable one.

At this point, I didn't necessarily hate it but I wasn't enjoying it much either. There were some cool and interesting elements but, overall, it felt like something I'd seen many times before. Hoping it would pick up steam again, I pressed on.

Unfortunately, the film seemed to give up on itself and felt like it just wanted to be over. What started off as a reminder of how horror films should be made turned into a reminder of how horror films are NOW made. The last 20 minutes or so felt like what would have happened if Wes Craven hadn't stepped in and put the kibosh on the Nightmare on Elm St. series. At least with those later Elm St. films, you knew what you getting into. In The Hole, it just felt out of place. The only thing I took away from those last minutes was that one part reminded me of the Mad Hatter section of Batman: Arkham City which is where I got my 50 hit combo achievement.

In the end, it felt like Dante started the project really excited but then phoned in the rest of the job for some reason. It was like a SyFy original that my father-in-law would be watching and I'd walk by like "Hey! That's fucking Richard Grieco! Where's HE been...?" And then some cartoony, five-armed troll with a Hitler moustache would try to bite him with its ass-teeth. Only, in this case, replace Grieco with Teri Polo.

My advice: Don't bother. You don't have to take my advice but I can pretty much assure you that you'd have more fun watching Gremlins or The Burbs or playing Batman: Arkham City or watching all of the Nightmare on Elm St. films in sequence. The Hole may be a forgettable piece of entertainment, but at least it made me think of many other things that have made me happy over the years.

Thank you for that, Joe Dante.

Day 1: American Mary
Day 2: The Loved Ones
Day 3: Room 237
Day 4: The Changeling (1980)
Day 5: Trick 'r Treat