THE HOLE IN THE GROUND is a new Irish horror movie shot on location in Dublin, Kildare and Wicklow.
The film follows Sarah O’Neill (Seána Kerslake) who is trying to escape her broken past by building a new life on the fringes of a backwood rural town with her young son Chris (James Quinn Markey).
A terrifying encounter with a mysterious neighbour shatters her fragile security, throwing Sarah into a spiralling nightmare of paranoia and mistrust, as she tries to uncover if the disturbing changes in her little boy are connected to an ominous sinkhole buried deep in the forest that borders their home.
Seána Kerslake is brilliant in this and while ‘you cant cope & won’t cope’ with some of the scenes, you will love this terrifically terrifying Irish tale. THE HOLE IN THE GROUND is a whole lot of frights and gets ★★★★ ½
The film was produced by Conor Barry and John Keville for Savage Productions with Benoit Roland and Ulla Simonen for Wrong Men and MADE. The film was funded by Screen Ireland, the BAI and Headgear Films with support coming from Wallimages and the Finnish Film Foundation.
THE HOLE IN THE GROUND is Irish filmmaker Lee Cronin’s feature debut and it premiered at the renowned Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah in January where it was met with overwhelmingly positive reactions from critics and audiences alike.
Speaking about having his film premiere at Sundance, director Lee Cronin said: “It’s been a whirlwind since we touched down in Park City. The wave of support and positivity around the film has really helped quell the nerves that you cannot escape when premiering your debut feature at Sundance.”
Critical reviews have compared the film to other great horrors and praised Seána Kerslake’s performance. Among the rave reviews:
“Seána Kerslake is a star” Variety
“The likes of Hereditary, The Witch and The Babadook have premiered [at Sundance] in recent years, going on to be some of the most talked-about horrors of the year – and you can now add the nerve-shredding The Hole in the Ground to that illustrious list….. say hello to the first great horror of 2019” Digital Spy
“The Hole in the Ground takes a simple, curious, highly cinematic premise and never over-explains or bombards you with flashy set pieces but rather, sustains its 90-minute runtime by creating two well developed, engaging characters, letting you live with them, and then all slowly slip into the darkness and paranoia together.” Collider
Seána Kerslake played the lead in Darren Thornton’s award winning feature film, A DATE FOR MAD MARY, for which she won rave reviews, and which also went on to become a box office hit in Ireland. Seána most recently filmed the lead role of Aisling in the forthcoming RTÉ drama series CAN’T COPE, WON’T COPE directed by Cathy Brady and written by Stefanie Preissner.
