Reviews
‘The Hole in the Fence’ Review: Where the Rehearsal Ends
This is the most emotionally exhausting film I’ve covered for HORROR PRESS, and I knew this would be tricky to write about. Most of my reviews are positive, fun, and full of jokes about my boss keeping me handcuffed to a computer. Even if the movies are grotesque, I can have fun with them.
There is no fun to be had here.
That isn’t to say The Hole in the Fence is a bad film, far from it. But it was a hard-to-watch experience that pulled tight on my muscles until the end credits hit.
A Dark Tale of Abuse and Conspiracy
Just a quick warning: child abuse, CSA, and racism are a core part of this movie, so please proceed with caution if you are particularly sensitive to these topics.
The Hole in the Fence is a foreign psychological thriller centered on Centro Escolar Los Pinos, a combination summer camp and catholic school retreat, where we follow a group of young boys whose wealthy families pay for them to be taught by abusive “professors” that worked with their fathers. While they’re supposed to learn how to be moral, upstanding men built for high society, they are instead immersed in fear and interpersonal violence when a hole in the fence draws speculation and conspiracy among the children over local villagers and their intentions for the camp. All hell breaks loose.
Toxic Masculinity and Colonialism
Many reviewers will rely on the good old standby of kids getting cut loose and going wild, Lord of the Flies, as a point of reference for this film. I think a better parallel is Soft & Quiet, a movie I didn’t enjoy but understood the appeal of: it’s a gut-wrenching experience that never pulls back from how depraved people can get when spurred on by mob mentality and a victim complex. While that movie tackled the uncomfortable result of fascism being popularized in small cells as American citizens become ever more atomized in our current age, this movie discusses the precursor to fascist (and, more overtly, colonialist) strains of thought in Mexico’s upper class.
The Hole in the Fence is ultimately about performances that ingrain those thoughts, rehearsing for a spot in oppressive positions. Not a literal song and dance, but the kind of performative action taken by insecure people to try and uphold a toxic system. The Hole is essentially weak men performing violent strength for boys under the guise of guidance, and boys performing that toxic masculinity to impress onto other boys the idea that they’re men; most importantly, everyone in the school is “performing” colonialist superiority over the indigenous village neighboring them. After all, it is the want of the ur-fascist that the enemy should be both weak and strong, that they must be terrorized as punishment for being both.
Climax and Questions of Morality
The film’s climax, with as few spoilers as possible, is the boy’s final rehearsal to terrorize others, and act on their teachings. The question then is if the children even know where the rehearsal ends and reality begins, which is in and of itself a horrifying question to ask.
One of the film’s boldest creative choices is that it has no true main character to follow through with this degradation of innocence. An argument can be made for several characters, chiefly the heavily wounded Diego (Eric David Walker). Still, the film bounces from moment to moment with no particular protagonist because it works best thematically for it. No one person creates the system, no one person can stop it, and no one perspective is enough to encompass it.
The child actors do surprisingly well in portraying this rapid decline over the vague course of a few weeks. They range from sympathetic and quiet like Eduardo (Yubah Ortega), to downright despicable, like the bloodthirsty head of the pack Jordi (Valeria Lamm). That’s not even touching upon our professors, the most intimidating of which is Professor Monteros (Enrique Lascurain), who fuses feigned sincerity with this dead-eyed resentment for the boys that underpins his every word in a very skin-crawling kind of way. It’s a true-blue ensemble cast of future greats and current actors that need more recognition.
Cinematography: A Thriller Shot Like a Horror Movie
The best aesthetic description I have for the film’s cinematography is that it’s a thriller shot like a horror movie, all the while taking inspiration from the likes of Terrence Malick of all directors. Which, on paper, sounds like a hot mess, but ends up looking great. There’s lots of smooth camera work and gorgeous shots of nature, both on location in Mexico and in Poland, for the exteriors. It isn’t particularly inventive or slick, but it doesn’t have to be; if there’s one thing the movie does very satisfyingly is give you a sense of scale and purpose of environment that the boys and their captors (because, in the end, that is what they are) are immersed in.
Regarding issues I have with the film, there are some curious line choices that undercut other themes and bring up strains of thought that distract from the primary message (hint: the mystery of the white-collared raven that the professors discuss). Despite how good the actors are, one or two takes have some slip-ups or improvised dialogue that can be distracting. Some scenes linger a bit too long, and the occasional heavy-handed symbolism will pop up occasionally.
A Bleak but Brilliant Masterpiece
Still, overall, The Hole in the Fence succeeds in its goal: forcing you to see how the sausage is made, with every agonizing turn of the crank displaying abusers grinding down their victims to make more abusers.
Is The Hole in the Fence a masterfully made thriller that fully deserved its Ariel Award and Oscar nominations? Absolutely, ten times over. Is it rewatchable? That depends on if you ever want to experience a film as bleak as this more than once. I will undoubtedly be as tense as the first go-around if I revisit it.
A24 never stopped pumping out banger horror movies. Let’s get that out of the way, straight away. Even its commercial and critical flops, like Opus or Y2K, still took a lot of really original swings, even if it hasn’t been a string of masterpieces like in their horror heyday of the late 2010s and early 2020s. Still, they may have made their scariest yet with Undertone, in a return to A24’s original MO of pure indie filmmaking.
A Single Location Horror Film Powered by Sound
Undertone is not a perfect movie, with an occasional off story beat, and the ending just missing the mark of perfection, but it is a tried-and-true testament to the power of storytelling. With essentially one active, on-screen actress and a single location, the film manages to create a sensory hellscape with immersive nightmare-inducing audio that has both story and scares derived entirely from a podcast. It is a sensory overload of pure terror, one that feels deeply sinister in its pitch-black story, one that demands to be seen in the darkest possible movie theater.
A24’s Undertone: A True Crime Podcast Turns Supernatural
The story is pretty straightforward…at least at first. It follows a true crime/horror podcast host (Nina Kiry), who lives by herself as she takes care of her dying, elderly, and borderline vegetative mother. Her co-host (Adam DiMarco, who is never fully seen) is sent a series of ten mysterious audio files from an unknown address, presumably sent for her to listen to on the show. As they begin to record their latest episode with live reactions to the files, reality slips further as she and her co-host fall into supernatural delirium. Strange noises, slipping time, and other haunted house trimmings all come out to play, each elevated by (as mentioned) horrific sound design and an even more horrific backstory.
Nursery Rhyme Origins and Deeply Disturbing Mythology
The story is about 95% airtight. Without getting too deep into spoilers, the origins of these files and their meaning are deeply fascinating, with some elements and angles involving the origins of nursery rhymes that are very, genuinely disturbing. There is one twist in particular that explores what one of the sounds truly means, which is highly upsetting once pieced together.
That being said, Undertone has some familiar tropes, and while the movie mostly touches upon certain unexplored mythology, certain scenes can feel a little too familiar to other recent demon movies like Shelby Oaks. The true meanings are a lot more creative, but it could have played around with its mythos to create a truly original villain.
Undertone’s Ambiguous Ending Demands a Rewatch
Similarly, the ending is almost perfect. There is a final twist about something the protagonist might have done that is a little confusing, and reframes the context of the film. It is highly interesting, however, and opens up several cans of worms of what this movie has to say about children, motherhood, and parenthood as a whole, as well as posing questions about the movie’s setting and timeline. It is always better to remain vague in horror, which this movie definitely does, but just a slight retweak of its final act could give the audience just the tiniest more understanding, without it going into full, mainstream territory. The film definitely requires a second watch, and in the best way possible.
A Groundbreaking Podcast Horror Experience
In a nutshell, the film’s methods of storytelling are groundbreaking. This movie is not a podcast, but all of its scares and stories are delivered to us like it is one. It feels like the birth of a new medium or style of movie, a perfect blend of audio and visual, with emphasis on the audio.
Additionally, with the story being literally told to us as if we’re listening to the characters’ podcast itself, it is a nightmare rabbit hole.
Like many people born in the mid-90s, the Sci-Fi Channel was one of my first introductions to horror. Whether it was random films playing or Sci-Fi’s 31 Days of Halloween, this channel was one of the main channels in my household. For the month of March, we’re going to take a look at Sci-Fi Originals (and maybe I cheated a bit and picked films that had their premiere on Sci-Fi). Picking films for this month was no easy task. Did I want to cover one of the plethora of amalgamated mega-animals fighting each other? Or what about shark tornadoes? One of the films I picked, after finding it too difficult to find Children of the Corn (2009) on streaming services, was an odd alien film I had never even heard of. That film is Silent Warnings.
What is Silent Warnings About?
Layne Vossimer (A.J. Buckley), his girlfriend Macy (Callie De Fabry), and a group of their friends head to Layne’s cousin’s house, Joe (Stephen Baldwin), after his mysterious death. Once there, they find the house in disgusting disarray. The friends decide to help Layne clean it up in order to put it on the market. But things quickly go south when they find a series of VHS tapes Joe left behind in the attic. What’s revealed in those tapes shows something that’s out of this world. Can Layne, his friends, and Sheriff Bill Willingham (Billy Zane) fend off these otherworldly invaders before it’s too late?
Conspiracy Theories, Mental Health, and Paranoia in Silent Warnings
As stated, this film was a late pick as I could not find 2009’s Children of the Corn streaming anywhere. Boy, am I glad I picked this. Silent Warnings has its fair share of issues. But it makes up for them in so many ways. This film is a very sober look into conspiracy theories, mental health, and the lengths that people go to when it comes to perceived threats. We get very little Stephen Baldwin, but what we do get is more than enough. He’s a recluse who lives on his 40-ish-acre property that’s been alien-proofed. His best friend (cousin?) is a scarecrow that has an AK-47. And he constantly records incoherent ramblings with his camcorder. Baldwin absolutely kills in his limited screentime. It’s like Stanislavski said, there are no small parts, only small actors.
Small-Town Horror and UFO Lore in Porterville
The quaint town of Porterville acts as the perfect backdrop for a story like this: a sleepy, nowhere town, where most people know each other. A town where the big call of the day for the Sheriff is about a missing dog. It’s the perfect setup for a story like this. It even mirrors many of the towns mentioned in Silent Invasion: The Pennsylvania UFO-Bigfoot Casebook. Much of this film’s atmosphere, the crop circles, acres of corn, and the disintegrating house, create a condensed world that adds so much claustrophobia to the film’s soul.
Acting, Dialogue, and the Problem with Early 2000s CGI Aliens
That being said, there are quite a few issues. Mainly, the acting. Besides Kim Onasch, Michelle Borth, Billy Zane, and A.J. Buckley (mostly), much of this film’s acting feels very Sci-Fi Original. It doesn’t help that the film’s dialogue, from writers Bill Lundy, Christian McIntire, and Kevin Gendreau, is just plain boring. And that’s not even mentioning how awful the CGI aliens look. A 2003 film about aliens, when only two or three are shown on screen, should be fully practical. And the fact that they use digital aliens takes away much of the film’s punch.
Why Silent Warnings Is an Underrated Sci-Fi Original
Silent Warnings doesn’t break much ground when it comes to the topic of aliens/Ufology, but it’s damn entertaining. But that’s the thing. Films don’t necessarily need to break new ground. I appreciate the swings this film takes, whether they hit or miss. There’s a wonderful setup with Stephen Baldwin, and the slow build to an exciting finale makes it all worth the wait. For a Sci-Fi Original, Silent Warnings has worked its way into my heart.
The Horror Press Podcast Episode 57: Backrooms & Jigglyspot
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‘Silent Warnings’ (2003) Review: An Unknown UFO Gem
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