John and the Hole (2021)

John and the Hole is the kind of unnerving, confidently controlled debut that gets under your skin not with jump scares, but with the cold clarity of its premise: a suburban world so polished it feels almost airless, and a boy quietly testing what happens when the rules disappear. Pascual Sisto directs with a patient, icy precision, turning bright, affluent spaces into something faintly alien while the tension tightens scene by scene, sustained as much by what isn’t explained as by what is. Charlie Shotwell’s performance is chilling in its calmness, and the film’s refusal to hand you easy answers becomes its most haunting quality, lingering long after the credits. It’s not for viewers who need catharsis or clear moral signposts, but if you like thrillers that feel like a dark thought you can’t shake, this one is absolutely worth the plunge.

John and the Hole is clearly aiming for an icy, art-house parable about adolescence, privilege, and the scary emptiness of getting what you think you want. The problem is it’s so deliberately opaque and emotionally distant that the central premise can feel like a provocative hook in search of a story, with long stretches of quiet observation that build more frustration than tension. If you need character motivation, escalating thrills, or any kind of satisfying payoff, this will likely test your patience and leave you feeling cheated rather than disturbed. That said, the performances and sterile suburban atmosphere are effective, and if you enjoy slow, unsettling mood pieces that invite you to do the interpretive heavy lifting, it might land for you.