Directed by Pascual Sisto
Written by Nicolás Giacobone
Starring Charlie Shotwell, Michael C. Hall, Jennifer Ehle and Taissa Farmiga
Running time 1 hour and 38 minutes
Premiered at Sundance

by Rosalie Kicks, Editor in Chief & Old Sport 

“What does it feel like to be an adult?”

I was often told as a small child that I was four going forty.

During my youth, my mother was an independent sales consultant for the Longaberger company. The job description entailed going to people’s homes, setting up shop, and telling the famed story of the illustrious Longaberger family and their basket making history. Essentially, she was the Avon lady of the basket world.

At four years old, I attended my first Longaberger basket convention. Picture it! Columbus, Ohio, I am donning a matching floral (custom made) dress with my mother, hair snugly tied back in a brown barrette, pen and notebook in hand. I was always business and took the basket racket my mom was tangled in very seriously. I wanted my mother to succeed no matter how wacky this whole venture appeared. Ladies were lining up to obtain my notes from the classes I attended during the convention… I took good notes. There was also the fact that some of them may have had trouble focusing with all that basket stain they were sniffing. There was something about a freshly stained basket that these ladies could not resist. I share this incredibly strange tale from my youth to say that, no matter my age, four, twenty-four, thirty-four I have yet to feel like an adult. I used to think I was mature for my age and that caused me to act the way I did, but over the years, I realized it is just who I am. It is my personality.

In the incredibly thought provoking feature thriller debut from Pascual Sisto, John and The Hole, there is a lot to unpack, but at the center of this twisted account is a young boy from an affluent family that is questioning what it exactly means to be a grown-up. In order to accomplish such a feat, he methodically hashes out a plan to place his family in a bunker deep underground. Much like I was at the age of four, John (Charlie Shotwell) isn’t just organized, he is practical. This is not the type of plan to be taken lightly. Precautions are made: medicine that he plans to drug his family with is tested on the gardener, he meticulously counts the number of pillows available to ensure the bunker is comfortable and homey and he practices his family’s voices for impersonation purposes.

John even seemed to have mapped out what he would do once he managed to secure his family underground. He, of course, does what any teenager of lavish means would do when they find they are home alone: use the family automobile, crack the ATM, call the pizza dude, invite a friend over and play a shit ton of video games. 

At the surface, this film could come across as a demented narrative of a future serial killer. An extremely well off family who succumbs to their psychotic son, a kid that would later be talked about at bonfires and dinner parties. I believe this to be sorely untrue. Much like the bunker in which John traps his family, this story is deep. I found that it is one that is still sitting with me as I continue to uncover small fragments and meaning. Throughout the picture, John visits his family several times to provide items such as homemade risotto prepared with his own hands, his parents favorite red vino, water, blankets and a flashlight.

Each visit to the bunker, his family tries to extract some sort of understanding from John as to his motivation. John is a person of few words, but I believe by witnessing the actions of him supplying his family with these much needed things shows that he does indeed care for them. He is on a quest to try to figure it all out. With much time on their hands, the family searches for a reason as to why John would commit such an act, all the while seemingly getting comfortable with their predicament. His mother Anna (Jennifer Ehle) recalls a moment in which John asked her, “What does it feel like to be an adult?”, in which she remarked “You’re always a kid inside. A kid with more responsibilities.”.

This scene, in particular, hit me like a ton of bricks. I may have never heard something so true spoken within a film. Something quite interesting that the writer, Nicolás Giacobone (known for Birdman) does within this story, is weave in a separate narrative of a mother and young daughter. Initially, this seems to play out as a mother recounting John’s saga much like a parents tell the tale of Hansel and Gretel. One of those moments in which they are attempting to have a point come across with the use of fabled folklore.

However, when returned to this story a second time, the mother is leaving the child behind with a stack of cash–enough for the daughter to survive on for up to a year, if she doesn’t squander it. The mother and daughter have an interaction that ultimately led me to realize no matter the age, there is never an aha moment in which one transforms into an adult. One could argue that through life experiences and discipline we learn how to be a more productive kid. Even as I sit here now, sure I know quite a bit more than I did when I was four years old, yet I don’t feel all that different. I feel that age doesn’t necessarily make one more grown-up than it does provide objectives.  Somewhere along the way it really is our age that just hinders us from being able to act like a child. For some, despite their age, they’ll never stop being a baby. 

If you’re a fan of Yorgos Lanthimos or Lynne Ramsay, you’ll probably enjoy this trip down the hole, just be prepared you may not find your way out.