John and the hole

This year the film John and the hole directed by Pascual Sisto will have obtained not only the Louis Roederer Foundation Prize for the Revelation 2021 at the Deauville American Film Festival but also the Grand Prize of the Crossovers competition at the European Fantastic Film Festival in Strasbourg. A well-deserved prize for this first film, as original as it is gripping, which in some ways resembles a Home Alone in destroy mode.  The script of Nicolás Giacobone adapts and succeeds in capturing all the strength of the short story of Nicolás Giacobone, El Pozo.

 We must admit that the starting idea of the film is as simplistic as terribly effective. Indeed, John (Charlie Shotwell) is a young boy of 13 years old without any history but who one day decides to drug his parents and his sister to put them in a huge hole in the ground near their house. We will never know the real reason of his acts but some details of the film could make believe in a kind of family ritual, of passage from childhood to adolescence for a well-to-do family which is totally disturbed. John will thus enjoy his family home and real freedom while his family agonizes in a deep hole in which they can not extricate themselves. The film John and the hole is thus totally destabilizing and is similar to Michael Haneke's films in the way it breaks up the family cocoon and plunges people living normally into a waking nightmare (a meal scene confirms this idea).

It is interesting to see that the main idea of the film does not appear at the beginning and the film begins as a sweet chronicle of childhood before John finds this hole and places his family there, the film will have taken at least half an hour to find its rhythm. We can understand that John wants to become an adult sooner and thus not only drive his father's car, go to the ATM and give money to his best friend but also to be able to play for a long time with his game console and miss school but from there to have such actions towards his older sister and his parents, it leaves us completely bewildered. This destabilizing side of the film easily makes its emotional strength and originality, but the too slow rhythm of the film makes its structure not completely functional. 

It would also be interesting to analyze the role of the parallel story featuring a young mother Gloria (Georgia Lyman) who tells her daughter Lily (Samantha LeBretton) the tale of John and the hole before this mother leaves the family home leaving her daughter alone and abandoned to herself. This story within the story of the film makes viewers wonder what the true hidden meaning of the film is.

One could also criticize the fact that only the character of John is completely defined and that the characters played by Michael C Hall (Dexter), Jennifer Ehle and Taissa Farmiga are underused and only summarily described. In the same way the end of the film seems completely unrealistic and makes the film look like a modern tale conceived as a satire of our current society with predefined rules and especially in which children are not listened to enough. The moral of the film suggests that it is no longer the children who must retain the important message of a tale but the adults. John and the hole is certainly a real cinematographic experience that can lead to a debate on our current society. Released in the United States on August 6, there is no release date in France for the moment but we can expect a VOD release or to find this successful film on a streaming platform like Netflix or Prime Video.

John and the hole
Directed by Pascual Sisto
Written by Nicolás Giacobone
Based on El Pozo by Nicolás Giacobone
Produced by Michael Bowes, Nicolás Giacobone, Alex Orlovsky, Elika Portnoy
Starring Charlie Shotwell, Michael C. Hall, Jennifer Ehle, Taissa Farmiga
Cinematography : Paul Ozgur
Edited by Sara Shaw
Music by Caterina Barbieri
Production companies : Mutressa Movies, 3311 Productions
Distributed by IFC Films (United States), ACE Entertainment Films (France)
Release date : January 29, 2021 (Sundance), August 6, 2021 (United States)
Running time : 98 minutes

Seen on September 10, 2021 at the Centre International de Deauville

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