John and the Hole: a slick but insubstantial psychological thriller
“John’s motivations don’t need to be explained, but ambiguity does not always yield complexity.”
- Reviewed from the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.
Pascual Sisto’s foreboding and crisply shot psychological thriller bears all the trappings of a Yorgos Lanthimos film, with none of the humor or substance. Charlie Shotwell gives a compelling performance as the inscrutable John, who suddenly drops his family into a bunker and embarks upon a clumsily forged independence. Elsewhere, a mother tells her daughter his story, a curiously awkward framing device in an otherwise meticulously composed film.
And what then to make of this dark “fable” given John’s rather uncommon position as the son of a family so wealthy they even have a bunker on their sizable property? John’s motivations don’t need to be explained, but ambiguity does not always yield complexity.