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Unsettling, R-Rated Psychological Thriller Takes You Underground And Doesn't Let You Out

By Robert Scucci
| Published

John and the Hole 2021

As a father of young children, I want my kids to strive to be the best versions of themselves that they could possibly be. I’m also worried about pushing them hard enough to shatter their confidence and make them hate me for trying to give them opportunities to grow that I wish I had when I was younger. 2021’s John and the Hole pushes these parental fears to their most extreme end because we bear witness to a 13-year-old boy finally snapping under the pressure and taking it out on his family in the worst way possible.

A slow burning psychological thriller, John and the Hole breaks down a family dynamic after its protagonist holds his parents and sister hostage in an underground bunker and proceeds to act like a complete psychopath. The most unsettling sequences in the film actually take place during the setup rather than the second and third act escalations, which left me wishing there was a more satisfying resolution.

John Is Scary

John and the Hole 2021

The setup for John and the Hole is as simple as it needs to be to get things moving. John (Charlie Shotwell) comes from an affluent family, but he’s constantly pressured by his parents, Brad (Michael C. Hall) and Anna (Jennifer Ehle). He’s drilled relentlessly on math and pushed athletically through grueling tennis lessons so he can qualify for competition circuits. He’s also forced to take piano lessons when all he really wants to do is play video games. By all measures, John’s family means well, but they push him just a little too hard in an effort to make sure his potential isn’t wasted.

After discovering an incomplete bomb shelter on his family’s sprawling property, John devises a plan. He drugs Brad, Anna, and his older sister Laurie (Taissa Farmiga), drags them out to the concrete hole, and only returns to feed them just enough food and water to keep them barely alive. With the house to himself and access to the family bank account and car, John picks up his friend Pete so they can enjoy their newfound freedom by playing video games and attempting to drown each other for fun.

John and the Hole 2021

Charlie Shotwell’s portrayal of John is the main reason you’ll want to watch John and the Hole, largely because of how convincingly he plays a young psychopath. My favorite early sequence involves John listening to his family’s voicemail greetings for research purposes, then calling the people who might be concerned by their sudden lack of communication. He mimics their voices with near-perfect pitch and cadence, which is deeply unsettling.

It’s never entirely clear what John’s endgame is, or if he even knows whether he plans to let his family out of the hole. What he does do is buy himself time so he can figure that out. Unfortunately for him, it doesn’t take long for people to start snooping around and asking questions about where his family might be.

Loses The Plot In The Worst Kind Of Way

John and the Hole 2021

I’m not going to spoil John and the Hole for you, but one major element I’ve intentionally avoided mentioning is the framing device that opens the film. This framework pops up intermittently through brief sequences, and I really wish there was a cut of the movie that removed them entirely. These moments soften the emotional impact of the story and undercut the tension rather than adding to it.

The real story here is John and his family, the animosity he feels toward them, and the growing fear of being caught after he realizes he may have made a mistake trying to bury them alive. Every time the film drifts away from that core conflict, the stakes feel diminished instead of heightened.

John and the Hole 2021

After all is said and done, I thoroughly enjoyed John and the Hole, but I could have done without the narrative detours that wipe out what little margin for error the story had. If you’re looking for a frightening character study that doesn’t quite stick the landing, and you’re willing to value the journey more than the destination, you can stream John and the Hole for free on Tubi as of this writing.


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How to unblock Pornhub for free in Texas

TL;DR: Unblock Pornhub from Texas with a VPN. The best service for unblocking porn sites is ExpressVPN.


More than a third of U.S. states have introduced age verification laws for online adult content, including Texas. In response, Pornhub banned access for users in those locations. That means millions of users in Texas are now unable to access Pornhub.

There are complicated reasons for this restriction, but the workaround is simple. If you want to unblock porn sites like Pornhub for free from Texas, we have all the information you need.

How to unblock Pornhub for free in Texas

VPNs are useful tools that can hide your real IP address (digital location) and connect you to secure servers in other locations. This straightforward process bypasses geo-restrictions so you can access sites like Pornhub from anywhere in the world.

Unblock Pornhub by following these simple steps:

  1. Sign up for a VPN (like ExpressVPN)

  2. Download the app to your device of choice (the best VPNs have apps for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Linux, and more)

  3. Open up the app and connect to a server in a location that supports access to Pornhub

  4. Visit Pornhub

$139 only at ExpressVPN (with money-back guarantee)

The best VPNs for unblocking porn sites are not free, but most do offer free-trial peiods or money-back guarantees. By leveraging these offers, you can unblock porn sites like Pornhub without actually spending anything. This is obviously not a long-term solution, but it does give you the opportunity to temporarily retain access to Pornhub before recovering your investment.

If you want to retain permanent access to sites like Pornhub, you’ll need a subscription. Fortunately, the best VPN for bypassing content restrictions is on sale for a limited time.

What is the best VPN for Pornhub?

ExpressVPN is the top choice for unblocking porn sites like Pornhub, for a number of reasons:

  • Servers in 105 countries

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A two-year subscription to ExpressVPN is on sale for $139 and includes an extra four months for free — 61% off for a limited time. This plan also includes a year of free unlimited cloud backup and a generous 30-day money-back guarantee.

Unblock Pornhub for free in Texas with ExpressVPN.

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Perfect, Forgotten 80s Thriller Is Hitchcock Meets Mad Max

By Robert Scucci
| Published

Road Games 1981

Road thrillers always make for a great time because there is nothing more unnerving than barreling down the highway when you are either in danger yourself or trying to help somebody else who might be. 1981’s Road Games, an Australian thriller that plays like a strange middle ground between Mad Max and a Hitchcock-style serial killer story, has no shortage of tense moments. It shows just how badly the road can mess with your head after a long day’s work as a commercial trucker who just wants to grab a few hours of sleep between jobs. Perspectives grow hazy, lines begin to blur, and you are almost certain you have seen that green van and its driver doing something suspicious on multiple occasions, even if you cannot quite prove what they are up to.

A tense, white knuckle experience from start to finish, Road Games is a lean thriller built around an exceedingly simple plot. That simplicity should not lull you into a false sense of security, though, because not everything is what it seems, especially once the horizon darkens, the road goes quiet, and a radio news broadcast suggests you may be sharing the highway with somebody who is very, very dangerous.

A Road Best Left Untraveled

Road Games 1981

Road Games introduces us to trucker Patrick Quid (Stacy Keach) and his pet dingo, Boswell. Patrick makes a point of telling anyone who will listen that there is a difference between a man who drives a truck and a trucker, implying that he views his current line of work as something beneath him, even if it pays the bills for now. He travels alone with Boswell, often taking back-to-back jobs against his better judgment. There is nothing to suggest Patrick is unstable, but his dispatcher encourages him to push through sleep deprivation with caffeine pills so he can take on more work.

While sleeping in his truck outside a motel one night, Patrick notices a man driving a suspicious looking green van who checks in with a female hitchhiker. The next morning, Patrick sees the man leave alone after stopping at the dumpster and climbing into the van before heading back out onto the road.

Once he is driving again, Patrick encounters a recurring group of colorful characters. There is an elderly man hauling a boat, a face-masked motorcyclist who keeps popping up, a nagging woman named Frita (Marion Edward) and her visibly annoyed husband, and another woman standing roadside looking for a ride. Against his better judgment and company regulations, Patrick picks up Frita after her husband abandons her on the side of the road. During this stretch, he spots the green van again, this time catching its driver burying suspicious looking bags in the desert and carrying around a small cooler.

Frita becomes uneasy with Patrick’s calm attitude about the encounter, especially after hearing a radio report about a possible serial killer operating in the area. She eventually parts ways with him, but not before Patrick picks up the hitchhiker he passed earlier, known only as Hitch (Jamie Lee Curtis). The two hit it off almost immediately, and Hitch reveals herself to be Pamela Rushworth, the heiress of a wealthy US diplomat who wanted to go on an adventure of her own, suggesting that she may have been reported missing from her high-profile life. As Patrick continues his route with Pamela, the green van keeps resurfacing, prompting them to investigate its driver under the assumption that he is the killer mentioned in the news.

A Series Of Escalating Events

Road Games 1981

As sleep deprivation takes hold, Pat and Pamela get separated, and Pat finds himself unsure of who he can trust. Everywhere he turns, the green van seems to be there. He starts pushing his truck at reckless RPMs to make his delivery on time, becoming increasingly unhinged along the way. Pat is convinced he needs to track down the green van to stop anyone else from getting hurt, but things spiral further when Frita reports him to the authorities. She suggests that Pat himself might be the killer, and that the story about the green van is nothing more than a distraction.

As Pat unravels while searching for Pamela and the van, all while evading police and trying to finish his route, his sanity is put into question. Every possible pressure point is hit, and Pat is fully aware that he is starting to lose his grip. With law enforcement closing in, his hitchhiker companion missing, and the green van’s driver still at large, Pat is forced to pull himself together and see his increasingly bizarre job through before the road swallows him whole.

Road Games toys with the familiar tropes you see in films like the grossly underrated Black Dog. Hallucinations feel inevitable, and the job itself takes a back seat to the strange, inexplicable encounters that keep piling up. Stacy Keach’s straight faced performance as an expatriate American trucker tearing through the Australian outback with a pet dingo is half the fun. His deadpan presence grounds the film even as everything around him starts to feel unreliable.

If you want to find out whether Pat finally snaps or if the world around him is the real problem in Road Games, you can fire it up on Tubi, where it is currently streaming for free.


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Sci-Fi Hit That Redefined Summer Blockbusters Now On Netflix

By Jonathan Klotz
| Published

Steven Spielberg invented the Summer blockbuster with Jaws, and then did it again with E.T. and Jurassic Park, but in terms of sheer spectacle, Roland Emmerich invented the visual language used by today’s Summer blockbusters with 1996’s Independence Day. The shot of a massive alien ship hovering over the White House and then blowing it to smithereens was everywhere that year, from the Super Bowl to every primetime TV ad break.

Story became secondary, special effects on the biggest screens possible took over as the real reason to go to the theaters, and Hollywood was never the same. Now you can relive the experience on Netflix.

Welcome To Earth

Will Smith

Independence Day wastes no time starting off the massive alien motherships moving into position above the world’s largest cities. In the most realistic moment of the entire film, there’s a group of people who decide to gather directly under the ships to welcome the aliens. That’s when they open up and unleash a devastating blast that destroys Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, D.C. It’s hard to understand today what it was like to see this level of devastation on a scale never seen before, with this budget and looking this good. 

The other half of Independence Day, the plot, is supported by an all-time great cast, including Jeff Goldblum, Vivica A. Fox, Judd Hirsch, Mary McDonnell, Randy Quaid, Mae Whitman, Brent Spiner, Bill Pullman as one of the greatest fictional Presidents ever, and the breakthrough role of a sitcom star: Will Smith. No one cares that the plot is as thin as Flat Stanley. From top to bottom, every member of the cast understood the assignment. This is one of the most fun movies ever. 

You can pinpoint the exact moment when Will Smith became a movie star. After Captain Steven Hiller is shot down, he walks right over to the alien fighter he took with him, pops open the hatch, and drops a one-liner, “Welcome to Earth,” as he punches the alien in the face. He was no longer The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air; he was King of the Summer Blockbuster. 

Independence Day Reshaped Movies Forever

independence day series

According to Rotten Tomatoes, Independence Day has a critic rating of 69 percent and an audience rating of 75 percent, both of which seem irrelevant. Roland Emmerich’s follow-up to Stargate is a pure popcorn movie. For every bit of horrible dialogue, there’s Bill Pullman’s triumphant speech. For every contrived plot device, there’s an extended dogfight between alien saucers and F/A-18 Hornets. This is the ultimate “turn off your brain” and enjoy movie. 

At the time of its release, Independence Day became the second-highest-grossing film of all time with $817 million, making Jeff Goldblum, star of Jurassic Park, the then-highest-grossing film star of all time and one of the most successful box-office stars of the 90s. Decades later, every superhero movie, every Summer blockbuster, can trace its visual style back to Emmerich’s groundbreaking disaster film. 

For years, fans wanted more. Finally, in 2016, the sequel, Independence Day: Resurgence, which brought back Pullman, Goldblum, and Hirsch, hit theaters with Liam Hemsworth as the new hotshot pilot. After 20 years, no one cared. 

Don’t let the forgettable and pointless sequel deter you from going back and streaming Independence Day now that it’s on Netflix.  Some movies are hits, some become cult classics, and then there’s Independence Day, which managed to transcend Hollywood and reshape the world of entertainment in its image. Whether it’s the hundredth time or the first time, you will get hyped when Will Smith punches the alien, Bill Pullman announces today is our Independence Day, and when Randy Quaid gets his revenge. Just don’t think about it too hard. It’s not that type of movie.


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