The Hole in the Fence was directed by Joaquin del Paso and written by Joaquin del Paso and Lucy Pawlak. It is about a group of boys who show up at a religious summer camp and find a hole in a fence. That’s it! If I had to wait nearly an hour to find out what was actually happening, then so do you! Mystery is a major part of the first half of the film. There is a lot here thematically. Classism, colorism, homophobia, religion, toxic masculinity, and more are all properly tackled.

The performances of the adults were great. The performances of the young actors didn’t always reach the same heights, but they were all able to hold their own. All the characters were sufficient. The focus was more on the boys as a group as opposed to individual depictions of the boys. They were careful about what characters were highlighted and why. The development of the group of boys was deftly handled. The character relationships were good. Those relationships were another thing The Hole in the Fence was careful about highlighting. There was always a reason and a payoff for the relationships it chose to depict. The dialogue was engrossing. It always gave me just enough. Doing so heightened the mystery, and the mystery- in turn- added weight to the dialogue.

The pacing was excellent. The first half was mysterious. The mystery was a major aspect of what made the first half suspenseful. Another thing they did to create suspense was plant a number of small conflicts, and as a viewer, I was left to wonder when those seeds were going to blossom and just how bad things might get when they finally did. When The Hole in the Fence revealed its hand I found the conceit itself to be inherently suspenseful, and I was on edge watching it in action. To further dote on how meticulous- and how right- the decisions and vision of the filmmakers were, the editing further adds to the suspense. When it was best to show the audience a little bit, they only showed a little bit. When it was best to let something linger, they let it linger. The cinematography was strong. It captured the beauty of the outdoors well, while also painting people and objects in a certain light when necessary, be it pleasant, dirty, uncanny, menacing, etc. There were very few effects. It was mostly blood. The blood was seldom used, but it was quite realistic. It is worth noting there was a single scene with a boy’s bare bottom. I do not know the age of the actor whose butt was shown. If the thought of that makes you uncomfortable, here is your heads up. It wasn’t depicted as sexual. It wasn’t in a sexual situation. It wasn’t there for the gaze of the audience. To me, it just added to the realism.

The Hole in the Fence depicts a microcosm of society, and in that way, it achieves a claustrophobic realness. I think it is more affecting to see a lot of the stuff here than it is to see the same stuff in real life because in real life this sort of stuff is brushed off and/or normalized. If that was the goal of the filmmakers, they completely crushed it.