CIFF: The Holding

By Rob Christopher in Arts & Entertainment on Oct 4, 2011 3:00PM

This is part of Chicagoist's coverage of the Chicago International Film Festival.

The Holding is a new addition to a genre you might call farm noir. Like movies such as Flesh and Bone, Terribly Happy, and Puffball, this little item shows us that (surprise!) rural life isn’t all sunshine and flowers and happy cows frolicking in the fields. The hackneyed, painfully predictable storyline centers on a strong single mother, Cassie, who’s barely holding her farm together. No wonder since her eldest daughter is a pouty teen who rolls her eyes at the idea of farm work, while her youngest is a creepy, Bible-quoting little girl. A handsome stranger named Aiden shows up, eager to work for nothing more than room and board. What are the chances that he might be too good to be true? About the same that the ineffectual local policeman, who dismisses a local brute as “mostly talk,” will get dispatched by film’s end.

Somehow this type of movie was a lot more fun in the '40s, when cinematic conventions didn’t dictate the inclusion of gratuitous violence and gore--but some filmmakers will never learn that showing more almost always means giving less. Nevertheless it does boast one novelty: this is one of the only thrillers in recent memory to feature death by exploding septic tank.

The Holding screens Friday, October 7 at 10:50 p.m. and Saturday, October 8 at 10:30 p.m.