SUNDANCE ’21 REVIEW

Sundance 2021: #Adulting is Sinister and Weird in Bizarro Fable ‘JOHN AND THE HOLE’

Name: Sundance 2021: #Adulting is Sinister and Weird in Bizarro Fable ‘JOHN AND THE HOLE’
Item: John And The Hole
Rating: 81
Author: Matt Oakes

By Matt Oakes · January 29, 2021

Where to watch: Streaming on AMC+, or rent or buy on digital (updated October 2026)Watch on AMC+ · Rent or buy on Amazon · Buy on Blu-ray/4KAs an Amazon Associate, Silver Screen Riot earns from qualifying purchases.

Kids grow up so fast these days or so the adage goes. In Pascual Sisto’s anti-coming-of-age dark psychological thriller John and the Hole, this phrase is taken quite literally when 13 year-old John (Charlie Shotwell) decides he’s old enough to be the man of the house, drugs his family, and stuffs them in a literal 20-foot hole in their backyard.

A few early glimpses of John’s routine are all we’re given to get a sense of who this kid is but one thing is clear: other people sense that something is wrong with John. He’s just a bit…off. And that’s before he doses good old Dad (Michael C. Hall), mom (Jennifer Ehle) and sister (Taissa Farmiga) and tosses them in a bunker with a bag full of chicken nuggets and some throw pillows.

Sisto uses a kind of visual echolalia to suggest signs of John’s underlying mental abnormality. Between static repetitive shots of John bouncing a ball on the ceiling, playing the same unbelievably dull-looking tennis video game, or otherwise-half-engaging with the people in his network, this works to reflect the dull monotony that John deems necessary to escape. But perhaps it was never his circumstance that was the problem so much as it was his underlying detachment from humanity.

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Working from a heady and allegorically-dense script from Nicolás Giacobone, John and the Hole further complicates its bizarro 13 going on 30 framework by adding another dimension to the picture; one that draws into question the veracity of the story we’re watching. Is this but a futurist fable about responsibility used to scare children off from desires beyond their grasp? A warning shot to eschew teenage revolt? Nothing is entirely clear beyond what we decide to make of it.

In the world that Sisto and Giacobone create, the cautionary tale is darkly colored and oddly funny in a rather particular black comedy manner. As John tests his independence and his family’s fortitude, the hole-fam bristles against John’s rebellion before succumbing to the absurdity of their situation. As they settle into acceptance and beg some kind of truce, John and the Hole hits strange comedic notes as the family gets more and more bored, dirtied, and accepting of the fact that they may never leave the hole.

Shotwell (Captain Fantastic) brings an alluringly inhuman energy to John. He’s unknowable and tinged with an inner-darkness that allows him to watch his family suffer and starve without the slightest hint of empathy. A confused teen dying to feel something, to outgrow his chrysalis and emerge fully developed, John wants the whole world and he wants it right now. And though John lacks the ability to connect, John and the Hole remains a darkly beguiling parable about deprivation and connection that challenges the idea of childhood innocence.

CONCLUSION: Led by an unsettling central turn from Charlie Shotwell, ‘John and the Hole’ is a mysterious, jet black anti-coming-of-age fable about the loss of childhood innocence and wanting to accelerate the pace of growing up that is sure to leave many viewers mystified. For all its lurid puzzlings, this hole feels like Yorgos Lanthimos was charged with remaking ‘Home Alone’ so I still dug it.