The Hole (2026) by Hanung Bramantyo

Director: Hanung Bramantyo

Year: 2026

Country: Indonesia

Alternate Titles: Bolong, 309 hari sebelum tragedi berdarah; The Hole, 309 Days to the Bloodiest Tragedy

Genre: Supernatural

Plot:

After a series of gruesome murders, a police officer is sent to a remote village rumored to be at the forefront of the incidents targeting the different religious communities against each other, but when the culprit is a supernatural menace, he tries to quell its vengeance.

Review:

Overall, there's quite a lot to like here. Among the better features here is the rather simple story that sets up multiple ideas into a chilling central mystery. The main storyline involves scores of individuals found throughout the village on specific days of the month in the same condition involving a hole bored into their back and featuring a series of scratches on their body that form the word equating a Biblical sin, giving this a great starting point. The whole purpose of offering up the sinful descriptor on an individual who the rest of the village was well aware of what intentions the individual was partaking in, so that everything was justified according to the religious doctrines of the community. This sets in motion the type of paranoia and mistrust in place between the traditional Islamic villagers and the Communist outsiders who are accused of creating political unrest in the area, turning the villagers against each other to the point of inflicting generational and systemic violence against each other, exercised in the form of a deadly spirit with a hole in its back. Knowing how all of this plays out and connects through the series of intricate backstories about how the ghost came to be created and why it's going around killing others fills in this storyline and makes everything all the more intriguing and enjoyable.

On top of that, the film works incredibly well when it comes to the supernatural elements present in this setup. The early attack on the village guard in the middle of a foggy bayou, lit only with torches and candles, trying to make sense of a series of screams in the night, is a moody, atmospheric setpiece to start this out, giving us a taste of the later discovery once the idea of multiple victims at the center of the mystery. Later interactions involving the villagers observing the dead perpetrators come back to haunt them as figures hung up in nooses or being chased around the property by their spectral figures offer up some solid, suspenseful sequences as well. With these plying into that politically-charged atmosphere and creating a sense of discord and distrust that permeates the village, it serves to provide enough ambiguity over what's going on that there's some strong suspense about what's happening, especially before we get the intricate series of black magic rituals here that help to fill in what's going on. Offering up intricate spirit-swapping rituals, black magic practices, and the use of a spectral being to create this offers up a solid series of spectacle-filled supernatural sequences that come together for quite a lot to like.

There aren't too many issues here, but it does have a few drawbacks. The main drawback here involves this one having way too many characters for its own good, as the twisting storyline features quite a few different timelines that need to be kept straight. The main idea of the officer and his wife being married after being raised together as step-siblings, so that now they're taking care of his step-father and her father, even though they've been together for years, is an idea that contains way too much backstory for a couple of characters that aren't important in the final tally, while other storylines, such as the village leader abducting and raping a woman who comes back multiple times to find her husband looking to avenge her murder or a witch doctor trying to manipulate others in the village by framing a homeless vagrant, offers up way too much going on for the film to have a lot of aspects to get through, while trying to keep the story straight. Tacking on plenty of political commentary about the history of the country that the film is clearly tying into, which is fun enough, there's way too much going on that it needs to spell out that part of the story, so this can be quite challenging to get that cleared. Also troubling is the use of CGI for some of the more over-the-top ghost sequences, which look silly more than scary, especially the scene of it dragging the couple into a new dimension, but other scenes are also quite apparent and hold this back overall.

Overview: ****/5

Working with plenty of positive points and not too many drawbacks, this one has quite a lot to like by taking a real-life scenario and using it to make an effective genre effort. Viewers with an interest in this style of Asian horror fare or who are curious about this style will have a lot to like, while most others might want to heed caution.