By MICHAEL GINGOLD
Starring Steve Kasan, Jeff McDonald and Eric B. Hansen
Directed by Stefan MacDonald-LaBelle
Written by Stefan MacDonald-LaBelle and Mitchell Brhelle
Terminal Burrower Films
The first scene of HEAD LIKE A HOLE, shot on intentionally rough-looking video, serves notice that this is a horror film that can and will get bluntly violent. It’s quite an effective opener for the very reason that the next hour or so is not horrific at all–at least, not in the same way–but that prologue lets you know that the situation is likely to descend into awfulness, and has you waiting uneasily for that to happen.
In the meantime, HEAD LIKE A HOLE (which had its East Coast premiere at this month’s Boston Underground Film Festival, and next plays the Salem Horror Fest on Saturday, May 3) is a most entertaining mix of absurdist comedy and a different kind of dread. It’s the existential kind that derives from being stuck in a monotonous job, though at least the one presented here pays pretty well. Steve Kasan stars as Asher, a guy who, as the movie opens, is the very definition of down on his luck. He appears to be living out of his car, which he can’t afford to keep filled with gas, and his cell phone service is about to be turned off. Desperate, he spots an ad for a “research” gig tacked to a telephone pole, calls the number and manages to land an interview. And despite events or fate or whatever conspiring to impede his progress, he makes it to the suburban house where Emerson (Jeff McDonald) explains the job to him.
This is where things start to get weird. Asher’s task is to sit in the basement and keep his eyes on a 15mm hole in the wall, measuring it every hour and noting its size and any new anomalies on a clipboarded sheet of paper. The assignment seems as simple as it is random, though Emerson (played with the perfect pitch of clipped officiousness by McDonald) treats it as if it’s a matter of life and death. Asher’s a bit dubious, but he’s able to talk Emerson into upping the salary from $40 to $45 an hour and signs on. The job becomes his whole world–he’s given a bedroom upstairs as his living quarters–but it could be a lot more arduous, and Asher finds a friend–and perhaps something more–in co-worker Sam (Eric B. Hansen).
As the days wear on, however, little signs begin cropping up that Asher has gotten himself into more ominous circumstances than he first thought. An overheard conversation here, a hidden note discovered there, and a general sense that there’s a lot Emerson isn’t telling him about the meaning of what he’s doing. Writer/director Stefan MacDonald-LaBelle and co-scripter Mitchell Brhelle accumulate the unsettling details gradually, making some of them pretty funny as well, until it becomes clear that their endgame isn’t going to be pretty. But will the bad stuff involve Emerson and his underlings, or emanate from the hole itself? After all, asking Asher to look out for any changes, in its size or otherwise, would seem to suggest that’s exactly what’s destined to happen. Or maybe not, and MacDonald-LaBelle and Brhelle keep us tantalized us with the possibilities before fully and very satisfyingly paying them off in the final act.
Considering how banal Asher’s project is on the surface, shooting in black and white (MacDonald-LaBelle also served as cinematographer) was just the right stylistic choice; it also gives HEAD LIKE A HOLE the feel of those old job-safety films that could sometimes get pretty nasty. In Kasan, the filmmakers found a perfect Everyman whose relatable desire to better his life fuels the first act, and whose reactions to the increasing strangeness around him are equally identifiable. The same goes for his increasing sense of being trapped in a tightly regimented employment that threatens to drain him of his humanity. Shot for just $13,000, HEAD LIKE A HOLE is the very definition of making the most of limited means, just a handful of actors and a couple of locations. It’s no small achievement that the movie could be fully enjoyed when viewed late at night on video, where its sharply focused spell could really creep over you, and also in a theater packed with people enjoying the many funny moments before the film turns the corner into something more shivery.
