Welcome to the 15th Annual Shortening!
Yes, I've probably reused that joke. IT'S BEEN 15 YEARS.
What's a Shortening, you might ask due to its capitalization? February being the year's shortest month, me being a fairly short blogger, I have traditionally used this time to tackle movies exclusively featuring vertically challenged villains. Dolls, bugs, sloths, elves, and of course, one of my favorites and today's start, darn kids.
Quick Plot: An elite group of preteen boys attends a fancy version of summer camp. There they experience the usual activities: mud wrestling, capture the flag, bonfires. opera, and, well, as you might guess by the fact that this is streaming on Shudder, some horrors.
The Hole In the Fence is described in its synopsis as a take on Lord of the Flies, which is both enticing and more than a bit misleading. Anyone diving into this movie expecting a Who Can Kill a Child-esque ride will probably walk away disappointed, but in its own very different way, this movie is even more disturbing.
Directed by Joaquin del Paso, The Hole In the Fence is not a story about the evil lurking inside the young. It's actually quite the reverse: children might, by both nature and nurture, lean towards certain paths, but their real fate is mostly in the hands of the adults who guide them. The boys of Centro Escolar Los Pinos are, for the most part, wealthy, light-skinned white collar citizens-in-training. Like their chaperones, some may go on to become teachers or politicians or priests. All of these vocations are part of a system. But said system can't exist in its tiered structure without the bottom: the weak, the poor, the disabled, the victims.
The boys are told that their camp is a safe space located just outside a dangerous village filled with criminals that will rape and kill anyone better off. Though they do some charity giveaways there, it's made explicitly clear that they are not to venture outside their gate (though none of the boys seem overly interested in doing so). Things change when they discover the titular opening, a random exposure that suggests outside forces can find their way inside.
There are already other small tears in the fabric. A scholarship student stands out as the lone indigenous representative. Not surprisingly, he's the easy target of racist bullying. His only friend is a boy suspected of being gay, and when the more powerful kids turn on them, choices of loyalty are made. Another child with heavy injuries faces a different threat: a counselor with dark and abusive motives.
The adults plant just enough seeds for their protoges to follow the same path that had, a generation before, been laid out for them. It's a cycle of violence, hatred, and hierarchy.
So yes: not the BEST time.
The Hole In the Fence isn't a fun movie. Its horrors are societal and sad, and its 'thrills' are more a closing shot that feels like a punch to the gut. It will hurt.
High Points
Directing two dozen children, many of whom are apparently not experienced actors, can't be an easy feat, but the results end up quite well. The boys are natural and haunting
Low Points
Considering the nature of one of The Hole In the Fence's only physical victims, it might have helped a little to have given the village and its inhabitants just a tiny bit more context
Lessons Learned
Page 666 of the New and Old Testament is more or less the same
As is true in any culture, continue to never trust men of the cloth
Chekhov's law of skinny dipping remains unbroken: your clothes will be stolen. Accept it
Rent/Bury/Buy
It's hard to say I enjoyed The Hole In the Fence, but easy to say I recommend it. Have at it on Shudder if you're in the mood for something dark and unsettling.
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