Story: Nicky (Christopher Serrone) was once an athlete with a bright future, but his visions of baseball stardom have been replaced by a new vision, pumpkins. As he adjusts to life after baseball, he often finds himself haunted by pumpkins, he will see a large, ripe pumpkin in a random location, only to realize he is hallucinating again, or is he? While the pumpkins are a concern, Nicky believes they’re linked to a larger trauma, a harrowing event from his past. As Halloween approaches, the past has started to resurface and he thinks the pumpkin visions are connected to last year, when he ran over a trick or treater in a tragic turn of events. But is this the past returning to torment Nicky and if so, how can he process his past and leave the pumpkins behind?

Entertainment Value: I like the premise here, a washed up baseball player haunted by visions of eerie pumpkins, but the movie turns out to be a flop, despite the hilarious and rich with potential title of Pumpkinhole. The narrative is passable, but is rarely interesting and even less often effective, thanks to a weak script and overly serious filmmakers. If you want to make a serious horror movie or thriller, a tense narrative with twists and turns can do a lot, but this film does little beyond pretentious touches to try to stand out. The tone is dead serious and even beyond the hilarious pumpkin visions, this one is just impossible to take seriously. The character work is thin and doesn’t set up emotional beats, while the tension is weak and there’s minimal tension period, this just never gives us a reason to be invested and barely holds the audience’s attention. I was mostly bored with Pumpkinhole, as it doesn’t often hit those moments of unintentional humor that sometimes spice up these kind of movies, this is just serious and seriously dull. I can’t recommend Pumpkinhole to anyone, as it was a total snooze and offered little, if any entertainment.

The cast is better than the script, which isn’t high praise, but at least the performers seem to show a spark of interest in the material. Christopher Serrone is the lead and he turns in a decent effort, but he is always undermined by the script. His character isn’t likable or all that well fleshed out, but the script seems to want those things, the writers just didn’t want to write them into existence, hoping instead the audience wouldn’t ask for much. Serrone does stumble at times and again, he is stuck with an unlikable, sometimes even annoying character that isn’t well written, so not all the missteps are his fault and the writers have to shoulder a lot of the blame in Pumpkinhole. Serrone does try however, in a very serious, pretentious type performance that doesn’t land, but still somehow manages to be one of the few highlights here. Perhaps with better material and a smaller role, Serrone could be a decent dramatic actor, but its hard to tell from this mess. The cast also includes Gene DiNapoli, Luchana Gatica, Paulina Cossio, Tim Farley, and Dina Selimovic.

Use this Amazon link to check out Pumpkinhole and help support my site!