The Hole in the Fence – Movie Review by Josh Davis : Pop Culture Leftovers

The Hole in the Fence – Movie Review by Josh Davis

May 29, 2023 11:30 am |

Directed by Joaquin del Paso and written by del Paso and Lucy Pawlak, “The Hole in the Fence” is a Mexican-Polish psychological drama largely filled with a cast of first-time child actors who reportedly improvised much of the film.

About two dozen male children from the exclusive Los Pinos Secondary School are on a remote retreat to the Los Pinos integration camp somewhere in Mexico. They’re being indoctrinated into the classicism and religious zealotry of their elders, but ostensibly being taught about leadership and morality at summer camp.

The camp counselors say the land they’re on once belonged to Aztecs assassins, but today the area is populated by poor villagers. Later, the rich campers are led through a nearby town to make an annual donation of clothing and other supplies. It seems like charity, but it’s also a lesson – or a reminder – that class matters.

Despite that, early on, the kids get to be kids. They cuss when the adults are gone, and try to spook each other with stories about turning the bible to page 666 and looking into a mirror to see demons. It’s the stuff of every summer camp that ever was.

Further on, it’s clear the adults have something else in mind than putting up tents, archery, and birdwatching. Behind the scenes, they’re manipulating the children in the name of indoctrination. They fill their heads with bullshit stories, turn the kids against each other in the name of social hierarchy, and even hire poor villagers to help build up the general sense of terror.

Production wise, everything about the film looks and feels extraordinarily organic. There are no digital effects or faked locations, and the child actors all have such natural deliveries. At first, it’s almost startling how raw everything looks and feels.

The filmmakers also were not too precious with the cinematography. There aren’t a lot of tight shots or artsy angles, but everything instead almost looks and feels like a documentary.

Perhaps the real secret weapon here is the original score from Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein (“Stranger Things”) that pulls it all together. The ominous, undulating music – and all the other au naturel elements – give off the air of a 1970s horror movie, and/or peak John Carpenter.

It’s also a neat trick that, along with the campers, the audience is often left guessing just what the fuck is going on. Are there going to be supernatural elements? Are things about to get very, very bloody? Is this a Spanish language “Midsommar,” or a contemporary riff on “Lord of the Flies?”

By the end – at least from this reviewer’s perspective – the movie is something of a modern fable and a social commentary. It’s a metaphor for how, in the wrong hands, wealth and organized religion can poison young minds. In short, “The Hole in the Fence” is powerful and unsettling, with an air of unease that soaks the entire film in dread.

The cherry on top is when a bus labeled “golden traveler” arrives at the very end to pick everyone up. The privileged get to go home and keep being privileged, while the poor and the unindoctrinated are left behind to clean everything up.

It’s certainly not the bloodiest of psychological dramas, but it’s one of the sharpest in recent memory, and all done on a shoestring budget the way movies were made before digital effects and bombast ruled cinemas. Both certainly have their place, but it’s nice to see a smaller film pack so much depth and punch.

“The Hole in the Fence” had its international premiere at the 78th Venice International Film Festival in 2021. It was commercially released in Mexican theaters a year later. The U.S. release was May 26, 2023, on video-on-demand and in limited theaters.