The Hole (In 3D)

It's Joe Dante! Hurrah! Back doing what Joe Dante does best, scaring little kids.

This particular bunch of kids that Joe Dante's scaring are a couple of brothers, Dane and Lucas, a teenager and a not-actually-that-irritating kid. They have moved to a new house in Smalltown USA, and find that in their basement, there's a big trap door, secured with a bundle of padlocks. Obviously, what happens next is that they open it up and take a look.

They are quickly joined by the girl next door, Julie, and together, they investigate it. They find that it apparently has no bottom, and if you lower stuff into it on a string, it gets pulled in and disappears, the string getting snapped off. This is bizarre and mysterious, but they can't immediately work out what to do about it. So they leave it, and get on with their daily business.

However, something lives in The Hole, and sends things out of the hole after the people who looked into it. The young lad is terrified of clowns (and hey, why wouldn't you be?) and so this weird clown doll starts stalking him. Meanwhile, the girl next door has something upsetting in her past, represented by a young girl, bleeding from her eyes, who stalks about the place in that weird jerky way the girl in The Ring did.

And so, the race is on to work out what the hell The Hole actually is, and how to defeat the apparitions it sends out before Very Bad Things happen.

The film, in general, follows the standard Joe Dante Horror Film For Kids format, in that it starts out really creepy and does a reasonable job of freaking adults out, before pulling a proper reveal in the third act - and as we know, once you get a good look at the monster in a horror film, it's nowhere near as scary. And this is a good thing; we're sent out of the film with a sense that the Bad Thing can be vanquished, and isn't so scary anymore, so hopefully the bedwetting and sleepless nights will be kept to a minimum. But I'll let you know how I go on that score.

So, really, it's a good little creepy, scary fantasy film for older kids, which pulls its punches just enough to not actually fuck kids up for life, but enough of a macabre edge to be enjoyable and memorable. I mean really, would you rather your kids grew up on a diet of Shrek sequels?

(I must just make mention of the 3D aspect. I don't like it. It's better than the appalling 3D of Clash of the Titans, which was basically just three flat planes in front of one another, and is shot in true 3D. However, it just looks wrong. There's a weird sparkly effect which is really distracting, and I worked out what it is. Let's say there's a shiny object in the room. Due to the lighting, the left camera picks it up as reflecting a lot of light. However, due to the different angle, the right camera picks it up as not reflecting much. So you get an argument between your eyes about whether the object is reflective or not, and that comes out as a distracting and unnatural seeming flickery sparkle. To be honest, if you can, you really should see this in 2D. I think it'd be a lot better.)