Sundance review: 'John and the Hole' is the pretentious 'Home Alone' knock-off you never knew could be made

‘John and the Hole’

★★

Appearing in the U.S. Dramatic competition of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. Can be streamed through the festival digital portal on Sunday, January 31. Running time: 98 minutes.

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A teen-ager’s white privilege runs amok in “John and the Hole,” a maddeningly obtuse psychological thriller centered on a family terrorized by a demon seed.

John (Charlie Shotwell) is a quiet 13-year-old rich kid, living with his parents, Brad and Anna (Michael C. Hall and Jennifer Ehle), and older sister, Laurie (Taissa Farmiga), in a big, modern house in the Massachusetts woods. He practices tennis, to prepare for an upcoming qualification tourney, and can play the piano.

What, then, to explain why he gives the family gardener (Lucien Spelman) a glass of lemonade laced with a knockout drug? That turns out to be a dry run for his big plan: To move his parents and sister, while sleeping off their Mickey Finn, into a deep hole left behind on their property by previous occupants who started constructing a bunker.

The family wakes up asking the same question the audience is left pondering for the next hour or so: Why is John doing this?

Director Pascual Sisto, making his feature debut, and screenwriter Nicolás Giacobone — who co-wrote two Alejandro Iñárritu films, “Biutiful” and “Birdman” — never make an attempt to answer the big “why?” of the story (which is adapted from Giacobone’s short story), much to the audience’s frustration. Instead, they show us the would-be comic moments of John trying to keep up the pretense to Anna’s tennis partner (Tamara Hickey) and John’s video-game rival (Ben O’Brien) that everything’s fine.

Equally aggravating is a framing story, with another mom (Georgia Lyman) and a daughter (Samantha LeBretton), that’s wedged in with no explanation or payoff. And then there’s the ending, which is where that white privilege hits its zenith.

If you can imagine “Home Alone” remade as a pretentious art-house movie where Macaulay Culkin is playing both Kevin and the Wet Bandits simultaneously. you get a sense of what’s happening in “John and the Hole.” Meanwhile, some talented actors are left in a hole, more confused than the audience.