John and the Hole (Streaming on Showtime Now)

An aloof, dissociative teen takes his family home to the extreme in a puzzling psychological thriller. Streaming on Showtime now, it’s an allegorical cautionary tale about disconnected lives, denial, and sociopathy.

Pascual Sisto’s film centers on a 13-year-old boy (Charlie Shotwell) who takes his parents and sister into a bunker. While they’re trapped in the hole, John engages in weird wish fulfillment activities.

Streaming

The story of a 13-year-old boy who discovers an unfinished bunker in the woods behind his house is not an easy one to follow. But Spanish director Pascual Sisto manages to pull it off with John and the Hole. This thriller is a must-see, as it explores the difficult passage from child freedom to adult responsibility.

Adapted from a short story by screenwriter-author Nicolas Giacobone, John and the Hole stars Michael C. Hall, Charlie Shotwell, Taissa Farmiga and Jennifer Ehle. It is a modern fable about a kid’s desire for adulthood and the impact it can have on his family.

While a bit sluggish at times, John and the Hole is a film that has wowed audiences and critics alike. The movie has a lot going for it, including a stellar cast, the presence of an Oscar-winning screenwriter and a director who has won multiple accolades.

The film also features a tense plot and an impressive array of visual effects. It’s an excellent blending of cinematography, editing and production design. It’s a good choice for families that are looking for a movie to watch together and can handle some dark and suspenseful moments.

It’s also worth mentioning that the film is directed by Pascual Sisto, who has been dubbed as one of the top 10 directors to watch by Variety this year. He’s also a former cinematographer for the likes of Michael Haneke and Alejandro Inarritu, so you can expect a high-quality product.

Despite being a relatively new film, John and the Hole has already received polarising reviews. Some viewers were blown away by the film and others didn’t find it that interesting at all. But if you’re interested in seeing this tense and intriguing movie, here are some ways to watch it on the web. The best place to start is with a streaming service that has a wide range of movies and TV shows in its library. That includes a number of well-known titles and even some exclusive content. Some of the most popular options include Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, and Amazon Prime Video.

Reviews

Spanish artist and film-maker Pascual Sisto's chilling debut feature John and the Hole (which has been adapted from an Argentine short story by Birdman screenwriter Nicolas Giacobone) offers up a surprisingly icy vision of the modern American entrapment horror. Inspired by the severe, calculated style of Austrian director Michael Haneke (Funny Games and The White Ribbon), it follows a privileged kid with little empathy who takes his parents and sister into a hole in the woods, where he plans to cheat them out of their freedom.

The family - which includes John's sweet, well-meaning sister (Taissa Farmiga) and an earnest, sexy father (Michael C. Hall) - is the sort of dysfunctional unit that's easy to spot, as cinematographer Paul Ozgur (Biutiful) peers through the windows of their fish tank house into the surrounding woodlands. It's a voyeuristic, detached view of life that gives the film a lurid air, as it proceeds from prowler-like perspectives.

When 13-year-old John (Charlie Shotwell) stumbles upon a relic of a bomb shelter, he decides that's the perfect place for his parents and sister to stay. He drugs them into unconsciousness, drags their bodies out of the words and lugs them into a muddy pit near his family's home.

Like many of Haneke's films, "John and the Hole" is a darkly ironic riff on the tangled strands of childhood and adulthood. The snarling, sly satire that permeates this film's dialogue and actions is a refreshing departure from the more melodramatic versions of this theme that are common in other modern coming-of-age thrillers.

As the narrative of this twisted tale unfolds, John's adolescent naivety is shown to be dangerously misplaced. His naivety is borne out of his privileged upbringing and an apathetic attitude that has him drifting through life without any meaningful connection with others.

But, once John begins to explore the hole, he finds that he's missing out on a crucial part of adulthood. He asks his mother (Jennifer Ehle): “When do you stop being a kid?”

The answer may not be as straightforward as it seems, but that's the point of John and the Hole: it's about how we define ourselves as adults. It's a question we all struggle with at some point, and one that director Sisto (who also produced) is trying to address.

Cast

Thrilling, disquieting and often chillingly strange, John and the Hole offers up some of the most ambiguous child-centric cinema in years. Like Yorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth, or even the films of Michael Haneke, director Pascual sisto doesn't want to explain what's going on inside a troubled kid's head -- and that's a good thing.

Shotwell, who has already worked with sisto in the Sundance hits Captain Fantastic and The Nest, is just extraordinary as the withdrawn John. There's a balance between his impassive demeanor and his roiling impulses that makes him an unforgettable blank canvas.

His father Brad (Michael C. Hall), and his mother Anna (Jennifer Ehle), are a bit more complacent than he is. Their dinner conversation is hushed, their wine glasses empty, and they seem to inhabit their own worlds.

But they're not entirely insulated from their son's growing anxiety about his family's situation, which is exacerbated when he starts to play online tennis and eat junk food. He also has a friend come to stay for a while, and they try to drown each other in their pool.

Their captivity is a little unsettling, but the filmmakers don't want to dive into motives or revelations, and so we never learn why John pulled the trigger on this sickly twisted experiment. The film isn't a tidy psychological thriller, but its quiet resolution feels poignant considering how long they've been down there and how dangerous it is to the three of them.

In a movie that takes place largely in one room, Sisto and editor Sara Shaw establish a fluid but disquieting rhythm, with cinematographer Paul Ozgur's camera snaked around the spacious house. The long lenses create an impression of a penetrating look at the family and their surroundings, as if the camera is peering down into a dark hole.

As the film goes on, we witness John's obsessions with adulthood. He has a hard time imagining his life without his parents, and his impulsive attempts to rekindle an adult friendship with Pete (Ben O'Brien) are accompanied by stilted conversations and an awkward exchange with his tennis instructor (Elijah Ungvary).

The film is more interested in the family's lingering trauma than in any hard-earned truths or secrets. There are a few brief stabs of blame or self-doubt, but otherwise John and his family don't seem capable of speaking up for themselves.

Ratings

A disillusioned teen wants to escape his parents and sister’s pampered lifestyle in John and the Hole, a modern fable of entrapment horror adapted from Nicolas Giacobone’s short story “El Pozo.”

The film centers on 13-year-old John (Charlie Shotwell), an unnervingly quiet & narcissistic kid who lives with his affluent family in their suburban home. He spends his free time playing video games, skateboarding & annoys his oblivious older sister Laurie (Taissa Farmiga).

As a preteen, John seems happy & content with his life, but there’s something wrong with him. He’s a bit nervous in class, he doodles in the kitchen, asks a lot of questions and is generally an annoying little kid.

When he gets the chance to escape his family’s pampered lifestyle, John sets out to do it. He drugs his parents & sister, and drags them into a hole in the ground. He then leaves them there, without a word or an explanation. They wake up in a state of terror, disorientation, and worry that they have been kidnapped.

Sisto combines riffs from dime-a-dozen entrapment horrors with European art-house cinema sensibilities and a strong thread of fairytale yarn-spinning. Adapted from Giacobone’s short story, the movie is a calculated yet calculatedly mediocre exercise in detachment that’s less Lynchian than “unfinished scriptian.”

The distancing effects are jarring and elegant: hard cuts jump us through the scenes, compositions are often shot from the perspective of the hole, and the shaky camera moves from a voyeuristic distance. The resulting bewildering, enigmatic narrative isn’t quite as much of a success as it could have been, but it still offers some interesting refractions and an undercurrent of dry humor.

John And The Hole traces the psyche of a disillusioned teenager who traps his family in a hole in the ground. Based on a Nicolas Giacobone short story, the film is directed by Pascual Sisto and features an impressive cast including Charlie Shotwell, Taissa Farmiga, Jennifer Ehle and Michael C. Hall.

John And The Hole is an unsettling and a surprisingly effective coming-of-age story that takes a unique approach to the theme of growing up. The film’s reticence and calculatedness make it a good watch for anyone looking for an unconventional, yet very human story.