Thursday, March 28, 2024

Movie Review (Sundance): ‘John and the Hole’ is a Cryptic yet Captivating Coming-of-Age Story


Director: Pascual Sisto
Writers: Nicolás Giacobone
Stars: Charlie Shotwell, Jennifer Ehle, Michael C. Hall, Taissa Farmiga

Synopsis: A coming of age psychological thriller that plays out the unsettling reality of a kid who holds his family captive in a hole in the ground.

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We all on some level resent having to depend on people. Especially as teenagers, as we start becoming who we really are, we hate how much of our lives is dictated by authority figures, and we can express this angst in deeply unhealthy ways. Spanish visual artist Pascual Sisto’s feature debut John and the Hole offers one solution to feeling out of place in the world – you could drug your family and trap them in a concrete bunker you found in the woods. It’s an uncomfortable, darkly comic fable that resists making its moral meaning too clear to the audience, but its themes – adolescent resistance of social burdens, curiosity about the world, and abusive parenting – are always explicit. John and the Hole may feel stylistically clinical, but it has a burning teenage heart, a fascination, and fear of things grown-up and dark, which makes it a captivating watch.

John (Charlie Shotwell) is a 13-year-old unimpressed by his wealthy family, their weak answers to his probing questions about the real world, and their efforts to win his affection with expensive toys. When playing with his new drone in the woods, Shotwell’s expression is as flat and impassive as it will be throughout the film. He’s much more interested in something all teenagers love – finding weird stuff in the woods. Soon, he’s dragging his family’s unconscious bodies through the house and wheeling them off to deposit them in his newfound pit. 

We never see him mixing the sleeping pills into his family’s food or drink, just the aftereffects of them fighting to stay awake in their bedrooms. Sisto and screenwriter Nicolás Giacobone (the Oscar-winning co-writer of Birdman) favour abstract, economical storytelling over explaining every beat, we’re left to infer what John has done or will do. This works on a narrative level, but it also fits in with the characterization – there’s something inexplicable about John, we never get a proper insight into why he acts and behaves as he does. By restricting our access to his actions, Sisto is restricting our access to his psychology, the less we see, the more we speculate. What could be the matter with him?

Sisto makes sure John isn’t completely inscrutable, however. There’s plenty of visual moments that reveal the cruel choices he is making, making us wonder the extent of his disconnection with other people. While playing piano he pauses in silence to listen to the rain, debating whether or not he should provide shelter for his family in the open hole, before continuing to play. And in a shot that goes on for an intolerably long time, he holds his best friend underwater in a game of simulated drowning. Are these deliberate choices John is making or is he incapable of the empathy required to do any differently?

The way the camera frames all of these moments is instrumental in exploring how we’re to feel about John’s actions. Paul Özgür’s cinematography feels distanced from the characters, the framing is exact and severe with actions unfolding in locked-down wide shots, almost as if we’re taking a step back to size up what’s going on. It means that when John is celebrating his newfound freedom, eating whatever he wants and making a mess across his big, empty house, it doesn’t feel like a Home Alone-esque gleeful celebration of liberty. Rather, John’s life without social burdens doesn’t seem to be one he relishes in – it’s just a new type of existence.

As well as wide shots, Özgür uses selective and precise close-ups that limit our perspective. Sometimes the camera is pushed up to John’s face, watching his expression as authority figures like his teacher or tennis coach belittle him offscreen. Other times we hear an action or sound happening just out of shot, not immediately revealing the source of it. The effect of our gaze being decentred is a sense of unease, like John’s family we’re subject to his will without a stable, full understanding of what he’s doing.

It’s a lack of understanding that threatens to break apart his family stuck in the hole. His parents, Brad (Michael C. Hall) and Anna (Jennifer Ehle) talk to him with a variety of nicknames, “buddy”, “baby”, and “little man”, that only emphasize their lack of connection that has prompted John’s drastic punishment. Along with his older sister Laurie (Taissa Farmiga), we watch as they get progressively dehumanized and consumed by the hole, underlined by John not talking at all while standing over them. There is no more mom, or dad, or sister. There is just John and the hole.

In all their reflecting on why John put them in the hole, the family can’t come up with concrete answers. But the lack of closure we get over this pivotal story choice is in a way the point. If John’s motives are ambiguous, his family’s perception of him shifts to one of constant anxiety, they now see him as a frightening force capable of great cruelty. They can’t easily fix whatever caused John’s actions, they’re instead suddenly aware of what kind of a person he really is.

Ambiguity is crucial to Sisto’s story, almost to a fault. Audiences will likely be divided over the lack of clear-cut explanations and insertions of characters who seem unrelated, but in fact, bear strong thematic resemblance to John’s story. There are aspects where the film acknowledges itself as a story, and by self-reflexively signaling its metanarrative, Sisto wants you to engage with his film as a piece of fiction – asking us what it says thematically and what lessons the story is trying to teach us. But most importantly, John and the Hole argues that the drastic ways we try to teach lessons to people can sometimes be harmful. Sisto has made a film unwilling to explain itself, but delving into its beguiling narrative will undoubtedly be a rewarding experience.

Grade: A

Rory Doherty
Rory Doherty
Rory Doherty is a recent graduate of University of Glasgow, a screenwriter, and playwright. Obsessed with films for as long as he can remember, he has plenty experience in making short films in the woods with friends, and has worked tirelessly to make sure none of them see the light of day. He loves sci-fi, comedies, mysteries, and deep-diving into strange and complex films. He currently lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.

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