A couple’s crime caper turns deadly when one of the rich women they target is left for dead in an act of blind rage and jealousy. But their efforts to dispose of the body unravel when their victim turns out to be alive and kicking, and determined to escape their clutches to reveal everything. The result is an extended game of cat-and-mouse that unfolds deep in the woods as all three enter survival mode, each with varying degrees of natural ability.
Even allowing for its relatively short run time, Slovenian indie thriller Hole is a film in a hurry. There’s little opportunity to establish the dynamic between Mia (Lea Cok) and Kevin (Marko Plantan) or to see their con succeed with earlier clients before the encounter with Ema (Darja Krhin) ends so calamitously. By the time events move on to the isolated forest, the audience still has no real sense of who these characters are or of the life choices that have led them all to this impasse. And that’s a problem for director Dejan Babosek, who co-wrote the script together with stars Cok and Plantan, because it makes it difficult to invest in the fate of any of the trio.
The lush woodlands of Ljubljana make for an attractive enough backdrop, while Babosek highlights the comedic absurdities of the situation rather than amping up the horror of Ema’s predicament. There are hints of the supernatural, too, in the form of a white angel and a strange beast. But the question of whether these spectres are corporeal or imagined is left intentionally ambiguous. Their presence is not enough to compensate for the imbalance between the rushed setup and the protracted and overly familiar execution.
HOLE is available on UK streaming platforms now.
