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As Lee Cronin prepares to head back to the big screen with The Mummy later this month, his directorial horror debut is now streaming on HBO Max. A24’s The Hole in the Ground joined the platform on April 1st. The 2019 supernatural horror film was a notable late-2010s entry to the genre and serves as a modern take on changeling folklore. The movie centers around Sarah O’Neill, a single mother who moves to the countryside to start over with her young son, Chris. When Chris begins to have unsettling behavioral changes after a strange encounter with a massive sinkhole in the woods, Sarah becomes convinced that Chris is not her real son and has been replaced by an ominous entity.
Lee Cronin’s The Hole in the Ground Is an Underappreciated Horror Gem
A “superbly scary country horror” and “an unsettling bout of paranoia that makes for a memorable directorial debut” for Cronin is how The Guardian’s Mike McCahill and Cultured Vultures’ Jay Krieger described The Hole in the Ground. A perfect option for fans of quiet, character-driven horror like The Babadook or Hereditary, the movie utilizes horror to explore familial trauma and parental fear. Rather than relying on jump scares, the movie perfectly plays on the changeling myth to drive the tension, focusing on the strained, deteriorating mother-son relationship and Sarah’s increasing paranoia. Cronin also did a great job of using the lonely, Irish countryside and ominous sinkhole to create a suffocating, slow-burn atmosphere.
