The Hole is a 2009 American 3D dark fantasyhorror film directed by Joe Dante[5] and starring Chris Massoglia, Haley Bennett, Nathan Gamble, Bruce Dern, and Teri Polo.[6] The film follows Dane and Lucas Thompson, two brothers who move into their new house in Benzonville with their single mother, Susan. While settling in their new home, Dane and Lucas, along with their new neighbor, Julie Campbell, discover a trap door in the basement, leading to a bottomless pit and, upon opening it, accidentally unleash a supernatural force that manifests itself into any fear of the person who looks into the hole.
17-year-old Dane Thompson, his 10-year-old brother, Lucas, and their mother, Susan, move from Brooklyn to the quiet town of Benzonville, Oregon where Dane and Lucas befriend their next door neighbor, Julie Campbell, 16-year-old. While exploring their new home, Dane and Lucas discover a trapdoor with several locks along each side in the basement. Opening the trapdoor reveals a hole which appears to be bottomless.
Over the next few days, each child experiences strange events. Lucas, having a fear of clowns, discovers a jester puppet on his bed, as well as other locations, as if it is following him. Julie begins to see an injured girl who bleeds from her eyes. Dane starts to see shadowy figures of a large man. Eventually, all three witness the injured girl together at the boys' home where they follow her to the basement and watch as she crawls into the hole.
Julie suggests they seek help from the previous owner of the house, Creepy Carl, who now lives in an abandoned glove factory surrounded by hundreds of lights and lamps. When the kids tell him that they have opened the hole, he berates them for releasing the evil inside stating that it will come for them and kill Dane. Later that night, Carl is seen scribbling in a sketchbook, almost blacking out entire pages. Carl screams, "I'm not done yet!" as the light bulbs around him pop.
The sketchbook turns out to belong to Dane, who returns to the factory to retrieve it. He finds his sketchbook in the darkness; Creepy Carl is gone. Julie decides to get the group relaxed and invites them to swim in her pool. While under the water, Dane sees a shadowy figure of a giant man standing above. Once out of the pool, he notices a trail of muddy footprints which he and Julie follow, leaving Lucas alone in the pool. They hear Julie's pet dog, Charlie, barking and return to see Lucas drowning. Lucas tells them that the jester puppet had pulled him under.
Later that night, while Lucas is asleep, Dane sees a hand-shaped bruise on Lucas's leg. He discovers that it is identical to a hand that Creepy Carl had drawn in the sketchbook. As he flips through the sketchbook, he realizes that each page is a puzzle piece. While working on the puzzle, Dane hears someone whistling. When he walks into the kitchen, he sees an envelope addressed to him from the New Jersey State Penitentiary. A note inside reads 'HELLO BOY'. He rushes upstairs to Lucas and tells him that someone is in the house. While Dane investigates, Lucas meets a police officer standing at the bottom of the stairs. The officer shows Lucas a picture of two little girls and asks if he has seen one of them and points to the girl whom Julie first encountered. The police officer leaves the picture with Lucas and turns to leave revealing the back of his head is missing. Lucas fetches Dane and the pair watch the cop return to the basement and climb into the hole.
Next door, the girl then appears in Julie's room. Julie climbs out of her window and meets the boys where she reveals to Dane that she and her best friend, Annie Smith, were playing on the tracks of an old roller coaster which resulted in an accident where Annie fell to her death. In an attempt to help Julie, a police officer also ended up falling to his death. She decides to return to the amusement park where the accident occurred; Dane goes after her, leaving Lucas on his own.
Julie finds her friend sitting on the same spot from which she fell. After Julie helps Annie understand that she had tried to save her, Annie disappears and is pleased that Julie is no longer scared. Meanwhile, Lucas hears Dane calling him to the basement. Confused, he follows the voice to discover the jester puppet mimicking Dane's voice. The puppet attacks Lucas, but is outwitted and eventually destroyed. Dane and Julie return and Lucas announces that he is no longer afraid of clowns. Dane then tells them of a theory that once you look into the hole, it somehow knows you and creates whatever you are afraid of. When asked what he is afraid of, Dane replies that he is not afraid of anything.
Julie then invites Dane and Lucas to stay at her place for the night. As Lucas is gathering his things, Dane shows Julie the puzzle he had been working on. They solve the puzzle together and see a boy being grabbed by a giant man. Dane rushes upstairs to find that Lucas is gone. Dane finally reveals that he is afraid of his father, who had abused the entire family and is now in prison. Realizing that his father has taken Lucas into the hole, Dane jumps into the hole as well.
Dane finds Lucas hiding in the closet of a twisted version of their old home. Their father, who has become a giant, discovers them and starts to break through the door. They turn around and discover the shelving seems to be a ladder. Dane tells Lucas to start climbing. Dane starts to follow, until his father drags him back down. As Dane fights him off, the giant father slowly returns to his actual size as Dane starts to confront his fear, seeing him for what he really is. Their surroundings begin to crumble and the floor falls away leaving Dane and his father trapped on an island under a ceiling fan. Having taken his father's belt, Dane pulls himself onto the fan and gives the crumbling floor one final blow with the belt buckle causing the floor to break apart and the father to plummet.
Dane emerges from the hole where Julie and Lucas are waiting. They close the hole, just as their mother comes down to the basement. She sees the trapdoor and opens it, revealing a shallow crawl space below. As the group heads upstairs, Lucas asks his mom if she is afraid of anything. She replies that she was afraid of a monster under her bed when she was a little girl. Lucas says, "Uh oh," as the trapdoor blows open again revealing the darkness has returned.
In the post-credits, the jester puppet is shown winking his left eye.
The film was first released theatrically in Thailand on May 5, 2010.[4] It had its United States debut screening at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco on October 7, 2011.[21]The Hole was released in 3D in select theatres in Los Angeles and Atlanta on September 28, 2012, and was made available on DVD, Blu-ray, and video on demand (VOD) on October 2, 2012.[22][23]
Reception
The film garnered positive reviews from critics. Film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 81% of critics gave the film a positive review, based on 36 reviews, with a rating average of 6.4 out of 10. The site's consensus reads, "A welcome throwback to the suburban teen thrillers of the 1980s, The Hole is a scary, enjoyable return to form for director Joe Dante."[24]
Related Research Articles
Tootsie is a 1982 American satirical romantic comedy film directed by Sydney Pollack from a screenplay by Larry Gelbart and Murray Schisgal and a story by Gelbart and Don McGuire. It stars Dustin Hoffman, Jessica Lange, Teri Garr, Dabney Coleman, and Charles Durning. In the film, Michael Dorsey (Hoffman), a talented actor with a reputation for being professionally difficult, runs into romantic trouble after adopting a female persona to land a job.
Gremlins is a 1984 American comedy horror film directed by Joe Dante, written by Chris Columbus, and starring Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, Hoyt Axton, Polly Holliday, and Frances Lee McCain, with Howie Mandel providing the voice of Gizmo, the main mogwai character. It draws on legends of folkloric mischievous creatures that cause malfunctions—"gremlins"—in the British Royal Air Force going back to World War II. The story follows a young man who receives a strange creature as a pet, which then spawns other creatures who transform into small, destructive, mischievous monsters that all wreak havoc on a whole town on Christmas Eve.
Puppet Master is a 1989 American horror film written by Charles Band and Kenneth J. Hall, and directed by David Schmoeller. The film stars Paul Le Mat, Irene Miracle, Matt Roe and Kathryn O'Reilly as psychics who are plotted against by a former colleague, using puppets animated by an Egyptian spell.
Theresa Elizabeth Polo is an American actress. She starred as Pamela Martha Focker in the Meet the Parents trilogy, Helen Santos in The West Wing, and played the role of police officer Stef Adams Foster in the Freeform series The Fosters (2013–2018) and its spinoff Good Trouble (2019–2024).
Joseph James Dante Jr. is an American filmmaker, producer, editor and actor. His films—notably Gremlins (1984) alongside its sequel, Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)—often mix the 1950s-style B movie genre with 1960s radicalism and cartoon comedy.
Models Inc. is an American prime time soap opera that aired on Fox during the 1994–95 television season. A spinoff of Melrose Place, it is the third series in the Beverly Hills, 90210 franchise. The series was created by Frank South and Charles Pratt Jr., and executive produced by Aaron Spelling, South, Pratt, and E. Duke Vincent. Models Inc. revolves around a Los Angeles modeling agency run by Hillary Michaels, the mother of Melrose Place's Amanda Woodward. The series lasted only a single season.
"Smile Time" is episode 14 of season 5 in the television show Angel. Written and directed by Ben Edlund, with story by series creator Joss Whedon, it was originally broadcast on February 18, 2004, on the WB network. It was nominated for and won several honors and spawned its own toy line.
Puppet Master II is a 1990 direct-to-video horror film written by David Pabian and directed by Dave Allen. It is the second film in the Puppet Master franchise, the sequel to 1989's Puppet Master, and stars Elizabeth Maclellan, Gregory Webb, Charlie Spradling, Jeff Weston and Nita Talbot as paranormal investigators who are terrorized by the animate creations of an undead puppeteer, played by Steve Welles.
Puppet Master: The Legacy is a 2003 direct-to-DVD horror film written by C. Courtney Joyner and David Schmoeller, and directed by Charles Band. It is the eighth installment in the Puppet Master franchise, the sequel to 1994's Puppet Master 5: The Final Chapter, and stars Jacob Witkin as an elderly Peter Hertz and Kate Orsini as a mercenary hired to confront Hertz for information regarding the magic puppeteer André Toulon used to animate his puppets.
Lulu Spencer is a fictional character from General Hospital, an American soap opera on the ABC network, portrayed by Emme Rylan. Previously, Lulu was portrayed by child actress, Tessa Allen from 2004 to 2005. The role was most notably portrayed by Julie Marie Berman from 2005 to 2013. Rylan stepped into the role in 2013 and exited in 2020.
Piranha 3D is a 2010 American 3D horror comedy film that serves as a remake of the comedy horror film Piranha (1978) and an entry in the Piranha film series. Directed by Alexandre Aja and written by Pete Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg, the film stars Elisabeth Shue, Adam Scott, Jerry O'Connell, Ving Rhames, Jessica Szohr, Steven R. McQueen, Christopher Lloyd and Richard Dreyfuss. During spring break on Lake Victoria, a popular waterside resort, an underground tremor releases hundreds of prehistoric, carnivorous piranhas into the lake. Local cop Julie Forester must join forces with a band of unlikely strangers—though they are badly outnumbered—to destroy the ravenous creatures before everyone becomes fish food.
Puppet Master is an American horror film series which focuses on a group of anthropomorphic puppets animated by an Egyptian spell, each equipped with its own unique and dangerous device and are represented as heroes, antiheroes and antagonists. The franchise was created by Charles Band and Kenneth J. Hall. The series consists of 15 films, 11 mainline, one crossover, a reboot and two spin-offs.
Don't Be Afraid of the Dark is a 2010 dark fantasy horror film written by Guillermo del Toro and Matthew Robbins, and directed by Troy Nixey in his feature directorial debut. It is a remake of the 1973 ABC made-for-television film of the same name. The film stars Katie Holmes, Guy Pearce, and Bailee Madison, as a family moving into a 19th-century Rhode Island mansion, where the withdrawn daughter begins to witness malevolent creatures that emerge from a sealed ash pit in the basement of the house. Jack Thompson also stars in a supporting role. An international co-production between the United States, Australia, and Mexico, it was filmed at the Drusilla Mansion in Mount Macedon and Melbourne.
"Nine Wives" is the 12th episode of the 3rd season of the American television show Numbers. Paralleling the Warren Jeffs and David Koresh cases, the episode features Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents and mathematicians attempting to locate and arrest the leader of a polygamist cult in which members marry young girls. Julie Hébert, a series writer, incorporated slave quilts and Levy flight into her script. She also included two explosions in the script.
Don Juan is a 1969 Czechoslovak short film by Jan Švankmajer, based on traditional Czech puppet plays of the Don Juan legend.
The Cat Creeps is a 1946 American film directed by Erle C. Kenton and starring Noah Beery, Jr., Lois Collier, and Paul Kelly. It follows a journalist and his photographer who attempt to research an unsolved death and locate a missing fortune, with the help of a black cat that appears to be possessed by the spirit of a dead woman.
Outlaws and Angels is a 2016 American Western film directed by JT Mollner and starring Chad Michael Murray, Francesca Eastwood, Teri Polo, Frances Fisher and Luke Wilson.
Ghoulies is a 1985 American horror film, directed by Luca Bercovici in his directorial debut. The film was co-written with producer Jefery Levy. It stars Peter Liapis, Lisa Pelikan, Michael Des Barres, Jack Nance, Scott Thomson, and Mariska Hargitay in her film debut. The film follows a young man named Jonathan Graves who, after inheriting his satanic father's estate, becomes seduced by its occult secrets. It is the first film in the Ghoulies film series.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
