As a general rule of thumb, horror loves to capitalize on a trend that’s proven successful elsewhere and then run it into the ground as fast as possible, with remakes of virtually all the classics, found footage, and legacy sequels picking up directly after an all-timer of an original three of the most recent. The Hole in the Ground is none of those things, but it still helped further one of the genre’s quietest and most unassuming crazes.
Co-written and directed by Lee Cronin in his feature-length debut – which then led to an immediate jump Stateside to helm the impeccable Evil Dead Rise – the atmospheric backwoods nightmare became the latest addition to an ever-expanding roster of widely-acclaimed Irish folk terrors that have established the country as a hotbed for top talent capable of scaring you witless.
That’s not even an exaggeration when you consider the likes of The Hallow, Nocebo, Grabbers, A Dark Song, You Are Not My Mother, Sea Fever, and many more have all emerged from Irish shores in the last few years alone, and every single one of them gained plenty of traction among critics, even if Cronin’s flick split opinion with a mere 47 percent audience approval rating.
The Hole in the Ground was a critical darling, though, with the 2019 effort’s impressive 83 percent Rotten Tomatoes score being parlayed into major success on one of the biggest streaming services around after FlixPatrol named it to be the sixth most-watched movie on Hulu. The admittedly standard story finds a woman become increasingly fearful when her son disappears into the woods and returns having undergone some disturbing personality changes, but it’s all about the execution.