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.
