The Worst Film Ever

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Finding a seemingly infinite hole in the basement of their new home. Two brothers and the girl next door soon find their fears start coming to life. Not a particularly original concept, playing with fears either conscious or not but always a good opportunity for some inventive scares. I believe this was Joe Dante's 'comeback' after a few years in a directing Haitus. At the time I remember being interested, along with John Carpenters 'the ward' which was his first feature in a decade. The Ward I watched with unspectacular results. The hole doesn't make a promising start as we are introduced to the two stiff lead brothers, they crawl into their role eventually but are largely unemotive (is that a word?). It's the introduction early on to Haley Bennet who plays the girl next door that really lights up the film. She is the star, and does an amazing job with some of the more drub dialog. She is the key for making the relationships believable. Bruce Dern gets five minutes to chew the scenery, which is an added bonus. The hole (in 3D, which I forget about and counts for some of the bad visuals) gets straight on with the horror, the horror is family friendly and really does play to its target audience. Age old fears are played with - toy clowns, what's under the bed etc. Nothing new for anyone with even a vague knowledge of the genre. There are effective scares here as Dante plays with an unnerving tone, there is an over reliance on score but it doesn't bother too much. There are some outrages character decisions as the tale becomes more fantasy than horror. You really just have to skip over that. In the end The Hole is an entertaining teen horror, the fast pace is ideal to cover plot holes and it's never dull if all a little predictable.

Kids get a bad rap in films. It is assumed because of their age and lack of experience, that they are less talented than adult actors. While in many cases this is true, it is not the rule. Some people I spoke to, immediately had no interest in The Hole, because of it's young cast. Right away they were saying this is going to be a rip off of Goosebumps and didn't even give it a chance. The film may not have been the scariest film I've ever seen, but it had a great backstory, a lot of suspense, and some very talented young actors. Those kids play Dane and Lucas, who are forced to move from the city to the country, to hide from an abusive father. The boys are miserable and decide to explore the old house the family has rented. What they find is a giant hole in the basement, with seemingly no bottom. As they continue to be fascinated by the hole, things in this small town, and especially in this old house just continue to get stranger and stranger, leading to a tremendous ending that will teach the boys, that sometimes the only thing you can do is face your fears. The star of this film is Nathan Gamble, who has done a lot for someone so young. I've seen him in a bunch of things and weather he's playing Commissioner Gordon's son in The Dark Knight, or the young activist in Dolphin's Tale, Gamble just has this way of always pulling at the audiences heart strings. Once again he's this cute, innocent kid, who's been traumatized by years of abuse, yet he still manages to face his fears, unleashed by the hole. I've seen plenty of films where kids in this situation just run away and hide, but that's not his style, and that's part of why this movie isn't a Goosebumps story. The bottom line, I think The Hole will appeal to Science Fiction fans more than Horror fans, despite the fact that it's labelled as Horror. The young cast is refreshingly energetic, curious, and eager, all things that will become contagious, and make the Hole, a much better film than you think it's going to be.

Chris Massoglia and Nathan Gamble play brothers Dane and Lucas, who move into a new home with their mother, where they discover a strange trapdoor down in the basement secured by numerous padlocks. Rather than report their unusual discovery to their mother, the boys open the door to reveal a bottomless hole that feeds on their innermost fears. Together with Julie, the pretty teenage girl next door, the brothers attempt to overcome their dread and defeat the malevolent void.I'm a huge Gremlins fan and love Piranha, but much of Joe Dante's work leaves me feeling rather indifferent. Innerspace, Explorers, The 'Burbs, The Howling, Small Soldiers: all reasonably entertaining but rather forgettable examples of fantasy cinema. The Hole 3D is yet another title on Dante's resumé that amounts to little more than a passable time-waster.Feeling much like an extended episode of Rod Serling's TV classic The Twilight Zone, The Hole delivers a fair amount of creepy atmosphere that will no doubt succeed in unsettling sensitive younger viewers, but which is unlikely to have much effect on anyone beyond their early teens. Mark L. Smith's stale script recalls movies such as The Gate, Poltergeist, and House, while Dante attempts Spielberg style domesticity, delivers predictable PG-rated scares, and regurgitates the weird and wonky set design from his 'It's A Good Life' Twilight Zone: The Movie segment for the film's forgettable finalé.

One can see that the makers of this movie grew up with old horror films, the ones that were about you, not some cliché annoying teen that just screamed for death or some deranged woman scared of everything. They were mostly about facing your fear, rather than succumb to its implacability.The Hole is like that. It is a movie about two brothers, one a kid, the other barely a teen. Their single mom moves them to a new town, a new house, and they discover this weird hole in their basement, through which all their fears take shape and come forth. Who will win in the end? Courage or fear?Now, the movie can be considered a horror, but really is mostly not scary. The small child, the teen boy and his female counterpart next door are normal people. No highschool dramas, no crazy parties that lead to unsanctioned fornication and subsequent killing spree (man, the people making those films have some repressed feelings), no screaming and running aimlessly. They are just exploring kids, trying to understand and stay ahead of the inexplicable.In that sense the film is similar to Under the Bed, also a film about two brothers fighting their fear and also one that shows clear love for the genre, in the classical sense. They both feel like 80's movies, especially the special effects (*cough*cough*), but that is a good thing for me.Bottom line: if you (secretly) miss Poltergeist and the original Nightmare on Elm Street, you will love this movie. Being a rather non violent film, you could even watch it with your young ones.The director is Joe Dante, who also directed gems like The Howling, Gremlins and a few episodes of Eerie, Indiana. If I think about it, the children in the film remind me of that show a lot. Bruce Dern plays a small role and Dick Miller, veteran horror actor that played in many of Dante's films, makes a cameo appearance as the pizza delivery man.