Day 17 - Before Evil Dead Rise: Revisiting Lee Cronin's The Hole in the Ground | 31 Days of Halloween

Before Lee Cronin unleashed the blood-soaked chaos of Evil Dead Rise, his feature career began with something considerably quieter.

The Hole in the Ground arrived in 2019, four years before Cronin took on the Evil Dead franchise, and the two movies take very different approaches to horror. There are no elaborate gore sequences here and very little of the insanity you might associate with Evil Dead Rise. Instead, Cronin’s first feature is a restrained, atmospheric horror movie built around changeling folklore and the suspicion that a child may not be who he appears to be.

For Day17 of The Bark Knight’s 31 Days of Halloween, our theme is A24 Horror, and we’re going back to where Cronin’s feature career started.

We Need to Talk About Chris

The Hole in the Ground follows Sarah and her young son, Chris, as they begin a new life together in the Irish countryside. After discovering an enormous sinkhole in the nearby woods, Sarah begins noticing changes in her son and questioning whether the boy who’s currently residing at their home is actually Chris.

The movie draws heavily from changeling folklore: the idea that a child has been taken and replaced by something that merely looks like them. If that mythology interests you, there’s immediately more to grab onto here.

It also means The Hole in the Ground gets plenty of mileage out of one of horror’s most dependable resources, creepy kids.

There are several moments where Chris is just slightly off. His behavior changes, Sarah becomes more and more suspicious of him, and the movie wants you questioning how much of what she’s seeing is real and how much might be coming from her own fear.

It works. I just don’t think the movie ever does anything especially surprising with it.

A Very Different Lee Cronin Horror Movie

If, like me, you discovered Cronin through Evil Dead Rise or his more recent take on The Mummy and decided to work backward through his filmography, The Hole in the Ground might catch you off guard.

There really isn’t any gore to speak of. Instead, the movie relies almost entirely on atmosphere. It’s quiet, dark and deliberately paced, using the isolated countryside and Sarah’s growing distrust of her son to create most of its horror.

That contrast has become even more interesting as Cronin’s career has progressed. Evil Dead Rise took him in a much bloodier and more aggressive direction, while The Mummy pushed things even further into the grotesque and the absurd. That movie is constantly operating at about a 12 out of 10, from its disgusting sound design to some truly bizarre body horror. I loved it, but I also completely understand why it didn’t work for a lot of people. In our podcast discussion, even Dan, who enjoyed it, couldn’t get past how much of Cronin’s Evil Dead DNA had carried over into his take on The Mummy.

Go all the way back to The Hole in the Ground, though, and Cronin is working with a much more restrained set of tools.

I’m not sure I’d watch it today and immediately predict that this was a filmmaker who would eventually give us some of the insanity found in Evil Dead Rise and The Mummy. They’re very different movies, and seeing just how far Cronin’s style has evolved makes going back to his first feature a little more interesting.

The Hole in the Ground shows us that the atmosphere and restraint were there first. The excess came later.

A Solid but Familiar Horror

I actually put The Hole in the Ground off for a few years because I wasn’t particularly blown away by the trailer. It looked fine, but there was nothing about it that made me feel like I needed to rush out and see it.

After finally watching it, the movie landed pretty much exactly where I expected it to.

Most of the cast was unfamiliar to me, with James Cosmo being the major exception. Game of Thrones fans will immediately recognize him, although he isn’t in the movie very much. The real focus is on Sarah and her son, and that’s mostly enough to carry the story.

There are some pretty creepy moments, the atmosphere works (although it does some heavy lifting), and the changeling mythology gives the movie a solid foundation, although they never dive too deep into it. It also gets plenty of mileage out of the creepy-kid factor as Sarah becomes more convinced that something isn’t right with her son, but, still, it never really goes anywhere that surprised me.

That’s probably my biggest issue with The Hole in the Ground. There’s nothing that I particularly dislike: it’s well made, the performances work, and Cronin created an unsettling atmosphere, but it still plays things pretty much by the book.

The trailer didn’t blow me away when I first saw it, and the finished movie didn’t really change that impression.

It’s just fine.

Does it make the 31 Days of Halloween cut?

So, should The Hole in the Ground make it into your own 31 Days of Halloween?

Sure, why not?

If you’re looking for something atmospheric, you like changeling folklore, or you just want a creepy-kid movie without a ton of gore, you could do considerably worse. And, now that we’ve seen where Lee Cronin’s career has gone with Evil Dead Rise and The Mummy, there’s another reason to go back and see where his feature career started.

But, October only has 31 days, so if you’ve already got a full list and there’s another horror movie you’ve been dying to fit in, The Hole in the Ground would probably be one of the first movies I’d cut.

Still, that’s part of the fun of doing this every year. Not every movie has to become a new favorite. Sometimes you find something great, sometimes you find something terrible, and sometimes you find something right in between, or in this case, one at least leaning to the side of great.

If you’re looking for other creepy kid favorites, I’d suggest two all-time classics: The Omen (1976) and Children of the Corn (1984). Or, if you really want to get into a scare and gore-fest, Sinister is an extremely dark choice that truly earns its name.

Join me next time as the 31 Days of Halloween keeps on rolling with Day 18, Undead, Infected, & Horde Day.

🎃

Previous Day: Day 16 - House of Darkness and the Long Road to a Small Payoff

Click here to view all 31 Days of Halloween articles.

Enjoyed the blog? Join the newsletter for monthly movie picks and new releases.