"John and the Hole" detached and inscrutable but unsettling and always compelling
John and the Hole (2021) Someone needs to talk about John, too. For the sake of comparison, “John and the Hole” is a coming-of-age story if Kevin McCallister actually made his family disappear with a time-out. Pascual Sisto’s feature debut is not quite a “Bad Seed” thriller, but as an adaptation of writer Nicolás Giacobone’s short story “El Pozo,” it’s actually operating on a more allegorical level. While the subject of an apathetic teen makes it seem closest to Lynne Ramsay’s chilling, thoughtful “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” Sisto’s film is less about a budding sociopath than it is about one’s eagerness for adulthood. It’s so understated—maybe too understated at times—that it doesn’t quite get around to examining what it wants to with any consequence, small or big. Nonetheless, “John and the Hole” is austere but always compelling. Charlie Shotwell (2020's "The Nest" ) is unsettling as John, an aloof 13-year-old who looks like an ordinary kid but has a lot of ideas flo...