{"id":6125,"date":"2013-02-07T16:10:51","date_gmt":"2013-02-07T21:10:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=6125"},"modified":"2013-02-07T16:10:51","modified_gmt":"2013-02-07T21:10:51","slug":"dvd-hole-the-2009","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=6125","title":{"rendered":"DVD: Hole, The (2009)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Return to: <\/strong>Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> \/ <\/em>H<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Film: Very Good\/ DVD Transfer: Weak\/ DVD Extras: Good<\/p>\n

Label: Alliance (Canada)\/ Region: 1 (NTSC) \/\u00a0Released: October 30, 2012<\/p>\n

Genre: Thriller<\/p>\n

Synopsis: Two brothers discover a strange locked hole in their basement, and naturally open the damned thing, releasing evil into the neighbourhood.<\/p>\n

Special Features:<\/p>\n

4 Featurettes: “The Keyholder (Kepper if The Hole<\/em>)” (3:21) + “Relationships (Family Matters) (4:26) + “Making of The Hole<\/em>” (11:39) + “A Peek Inside The Hole<\/em>” (4:46) \/ Movie Stills (1:51) \/ Trailer for “The Forger”<\/p>\n

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Review:<\/p>\n

The release of Joe Dante\u2019s 2009 film The Hole<\/strong> on a poorly mastered Canadian DVD in 2012 deserves a case study analysis on what\u2019s happened to one of the golden graduates of Roger Corman\u2019s unofficial film school,<\/a> Corman\u2019s New World Pictures outfit, where Dante\u2019s alumni (Peter Bogdanovich, Jonathan Kaplan, John Sayles, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola) learned the basic skills to make films by their wits while saving money and delivering a commercial exploitation product to cinemas.<\/p>\n

Dante\u2019s unique among his colleagues because he wholeheartedly embraced the clich\u00e9s of fifties B movies \u2013 horror, sci-fi, sexploitation, – and gave it own spin through a personalized matrix heavily influenced by a sense of humour and visual style from Warner Bros. cartoons.<\/p>\n

Dante eventually made a celebratory animated film \u2013 Looney Tunes: Back in Action<\/strong> (2003) \u2013 but the commercial and critical failure of that film pretty much sent him into TV, since Hollywood no longer cared for his blend of nostalgia and referential humour. He tried that combo once before in the expensive dud Explorers<\/strong> (1985) and with better success in his short segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie<\/a><\/strong> (1983), but cartoonish humour \u2013 in visual, sonic, and story areas \u2013 is a tough sell, with only Gremlins<\/strong> (1984) being his most perfect fusion.<\/p>\n

Critics could argue Dante is his worst enemy \u2013 Gremlins<\/strong> was primarily written by Chris Columbus, and executive produced by Steven Spielberg \u2013 when there\u2019s no producer willing to argue against indulgent references & sequences (chief problems with 1990\u2019s Gremlins 2: The New Batch<\/strong>).<\/p>\n

What\u2019s absurd is how a new generation of film fans deliberately seek out eighties shockers and fantasy films on video, if not make their own riffs on classic eighties kid shockers, where the most clever filmmakers snuck in a few dark shades typical of their own world views.<\/p>\n

Spielberg is part of that classic generation \u2013 his embrace of edgier material is evident in his allowances of Dante and Columbus\u2019 dark moments & black humour within Gremlins<\/strong>, as well as quality control and shaping scenes in Poltergeist <\/a><\/strong>[M<\/a>] (1982) \u2013 but it\u2019s Dante\u2019s sensibilities which are key to the success of eighties kid shockers because they bear his tough-to-replicate blend of humour, horror, and a family structure where the parents are smiling, clueless characters that hover at the peripherals of the film while all dramatic meat comes from the more knowing, instinctively reactive and defensive kids; whether it\u2019s aliens, monsters, or inter-dimensional weirdness, in most cases it\u2019s the kids who find solutions to save the world while parents are (essentially) functional dolts.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not excessive to pin down the success of that formula \u2013 smart kids saving the world from blindered parents \u2013 on Dante himself when there\u2019s his short-lived TV series Eerie, Indiana<\/strong> (1991-1992): on a daily basis, kids save their town from the weirdness that repeatedly bubbles up from underground, or appears right next door. Dante\u2019s cinema worldview has one unique concession towards the distribution of intelligence and success of any grievous problem: kids may figure out the problem and save the world, but the wisdom<\/em> and caveats<\/em> come from cranky old farts with weird inventions or fixations, and in The Hole<\/strong>, the key to what lies beneath the basement of the Dane (Chris Massoglia) and Lucas\u2019 (Nathan Gamble) new home in Smalltown America comes in cryptic form from former house owner Creepy Carl (Dante regular Bruce Dern).<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a formula that Dante probably refined into his own warped sensibilities from Spielberg \u2013 the dopey parents and smart kids combo is core to E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial<\/strong> (1982) \u2013 but whereas Spielberg fixated quite obsessively on suburbia, Dante likes to set his family dramas in small town environments, if not those ersatz small town designer homes sold to yuppie parents and (surprise) weird, paranoid older farts \u2013 a key example being The \u2018Burbs<\/strong> (1989) , where the heroes are specifically male parents stunted at 14 years of age, and the kids watch the adults act like brats, fighting amongst themselves; with the new weird neighbours; and weirdo older neighbours.<\/p>\n

Even Small Soldiers <\/strong>(1998) carries on the Dante worldview of a small town beset by dangerous, scheming cartoonish aggressors in the form of a locally based toy company whose popular, nationally distributed products go wild in the white picket fence yards of citizens, and ruin the d\u00e9cor of quaint Main Street.<\/p>\n

Although he revisits the same worlds in every film \u2013 Matinee<\/a><\/strong> (1993) is unique in being set during the fifties, the era Dante that influenced his worldview \u2013 there\u2019s a freshness to the lunacy that pits adults, kids, and real \/ imagined monsters into a Tasmanian Devil whirlwind of chaos and PG-level carnage, and that\u2019s why filmmakers such as J.J. Abrams, when given the chance, make their own reverent ode to eighties kid shockers. Super 8<\/a><\/strong> [M<\/a>] (2011) is a near-perfect mix of that cache of films + Abrams\u2019 obsession with and steeped depiction of loss (death of loved ones). Dante similarly worked in some grievous loss in films like Gremlins<\/strong> (admittedly, the death of Santa is ostensibly a sick joke), but in The Hole<\/strong> the death of a child is very serious, and it\u2019s key to a character\u2019s redemption and freedom from her worst inner fear.<\/p>\n

The absurdity of Dante\u2019s current career situation \u2013 he\u2019s a pioneer and ongoing proponent of eighties kid shockers unwanted by the film studios he enriched \u2013 is aggravated when you have filmmakers like Abrams given money while the original proponents either stay in TV, or must seek financing from overseas with no guarantee of a theatrical or home video released in their native America \u2013 the chief reason why Dante\u2019s 2009 film has been a sore spot for genre fans.<\/p>\n

Why did it take 3 years for his film \u2013 boasting real 3D effects just as studios were re-rendering films in faux<\/em> 3D to exploit the current craze \u2013 to reach home turf? Why is the film available in Europe on Blu-ray (and BR 3D in Spain), but we\u2019re treated to a shitty PAL-NTSC down-conversion on DVD in Canada? And why is The Hole<\/strong> available widely as a digital download from Amazon.com, but the BR + DVD combo disc is tough to find from indie label Big Air Studios?<\/p>\n

Perhaps there\u2019s the fear or expectation is of a critical and financial disaster, but as Jonathan Levine\u2019s still unavailable All the Boys Love Many Lane<\/a><\/strong> (2006) proves, good films can sit on the shelves when either no one cares, or the current North American \/ American rights holder decides its cheaper to sit on a property that deal with any kind of marketing and exploitation.<\/p>\n

The Hole<\/strong>\u2019s release on DVD with rudimentary making-of featurettes (standard banal EPK material produced in 2010) caught Dante fans off-guard because there was no head\u2019s up. In Canada, it was silently released by Alliance in a poor transfer affected by stutter movements whenever the camera pans laterally, and passing objects have a strobing motion. It also seems there never was any plan for a special edition nor HD release, making this a perfunctory release, like some foreign oddity that came in a 100-film sales package.<\/p>\n

The Hole<\/strong> isn\u2019t a perfect film, but it\u2019s an example of Dante\u2019s shift from having fun with nostalgia through his personal filters, and now darkening the palette beyond the standard PG crowd. It\u2019s hardly a film that\u2019ll offend, shock, or traumatize kids, but Dante has essentially made a movie for adults who grew up on his specific brand of shockers, updated with darker references, like child + spousal abuse.<\/p>\n

The story has a simple hook: much in the way the two boys in Eerie, Indiana<\/strong> discover their town is the centre of weirdness for the world, the two boys and their mom fleeing from the influence of their abusive, jailed dad in The Hole<\/strong> realize the padlocked trapdoor in the basement isn\u2019t a service panel for the wastewater flue but a doorway to weird dark force that sends up some fearsome figures.<\/p>\n

Dante references himself in the climactic battle deep in the hole \u2013 the extreme angles and set d\u00e9cor are lifted from the cartoon world he explored in his TZ<\/strong> segment, \u201cIt\u2019s a Good Life\u201d \u2013 but he also has fun with the evil clown doll, best teased to terrifying results by Tobe Hooper in Poltergeist<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The locale is again another Smalltown in America, and the kids at one point seek wisdom from the hole\u2019s former guardian, Crazy Carl (The \u2018Burbs<\/strong>\u2019 Bruce Dern), and the boys\u2019 mother Susan (Teri Polo) is another clueless, marginalized adult. The score by Javier Navarrete is all-orchestral like Jerry Goldsmith\u2019s own nostalgia-steeped themes from Matinee<\/strong> and Gremlins<\/strong>, and as Dante has shown in both feature films (The Howling<\/a><\/strong>, Piranha<\/strong>) and TV (Masters of Horror<\/a><\/strong>), he knows how to scare audiences with elegant camera movies and lighting.<\/p>\n

Like his TZ segment, there are scenes where the hidden face or a shadowy figure is the most terrifying element. The rag doll walk of a ghostly girl in a diner\u2019s washroom is beautifully crafted, as are simple visual tricks that don\u2019t involve heavy CGI (such as a warped hallway that\u2019s literally a mirror trick).<\/p>\n

Where the film gets a little wonky is the imbalance between dark tones, surreal imagery, and the emotional memory of the kid characters, of which the ghostly girl\u2019s first appearance causes the biggest continuity error: while neighbourhood hottie Julie (Haley Bennett) was scared to death in the locked bathroom encounter, she never speaks of it again nor shows any lingering trauma until the girl is brought up later by the boys when they find the ghost in their basement. Even then, either because of Dante\u2019s direction, Bennett\u2019s muted performance style, or a continuity glitch, there\u2019s no slight inference that Julie and the ghostly girl are somehow connected.<\/p>\n

Writer Mark L. Smith (Vacancy<\/strong>) keeps the characters\u2019 connection to these ghostly apparitions until the end, but Dante reveals them almost obliquely: they come up in conversation, but the information is less important than getting the characters to the next sequence. The Hole <\/strong>is beautifully shot by Theo van de Sande (Blade<\/strong>) and Marshall Harvey\u2019s editing maintains an unusually brisk pacing which covers over some of the continuity quandaries, but the darkness of the characters really deserves some slower pacing in a few spots.<\/p>\n

Lesser issues with the film\u2019s continuity include an early scene between mom and the two boys in an unfurnished room that feels like a reshoot stuck between their arrival and unpacking in their new house; and a later scene where a puzzle pastiche of drawings is assembled in one swoop by Julie – wholly unbelievable because Dane is supposed to be a visually minded, burgeoning artist and should be able to figure out a puzzle pencil sketched on standard note cards.<\/p>\n

Although he\u2019s made political jabs in his Masters of Horror<\/strong> episodes, Dante has yet to make a realist film \u2013 his work deals with nostalgic elements and genre tropes reconfigured into a narrative specific to his sensibilities \u2013 but his worldview might make such a venture impossible; perhaps a poke at realism is only possible when he\u2019s restricted to specific genre conventions in areas like crime shows, as with his episodes for CSI: NY<\/strong> (2007), and Hawaii Five-0<\/strong> (2011), where each series\u2019 story Bible outlines how far any writer and director can push the realms of cartoon humour, satire, and absurdity.<\/p>\n

The one thing clear with The Hole<\/strong> is its success as a darker riff on the eighties kid-shocker by progenitor Dante: there\u2019s nothing grievously wrong with the film, and its absence from cinemas \u2013 even in a limited release in its intended 3D format \u2013 is another blow to a director who deserves better.<\/p>\n

For a more a more passionate chronology of The Hole<\/strong>\u2019s idiotic treatment by North American distributors, visit Ma Ha\u2019s Magic Film Corner<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2013 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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External References<\/em>:<\/p>\n

IMDB <\/a>— Official Website<\/a> — Composer Filmography<\/a><\/p>\n

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Amazon Search Links:<\/em><\/p>\n

Amazon.ca<\/a>\"\" \"\" —<\/span> Amazon.com<\/a>\"\" \"\" —<\/span> Amazon.co.uk<\/a>\"\" \"\"
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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> <\/em>\/\u00a0H<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Return to: Home \/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews \/ H . Film: Very Good\/ DVD Transfer: Weak\/ DVD Extras: Good Label: Alliance (Canada)\/ Region: 1 (NTSC) \/\u00a0Released: October 30, 2012 Genre: Thriller Synopsis: Two brothers discover a strange locked hole in their basement, and naturally open the damned thing, releasing evil into the neighbourhood. Special Features: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[1845,1525,1846],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-1AN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6125"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6125"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6130,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6125\/revisions\/6130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}