Questions.. (spoilers)

How did he get them down there?

It was not shown so it requires suspension of disbelief. I can buy that that a 13 year old kid managed to get his family to the hole using a wheelbarrow, but dropping them down that hole would have resulted in severe injuries.

Was that poop they were playfully smearing on their faces? (like they had psychologically broken to that point?)

Pretty sure that was just mud. An earlier scene shows John throw a bag down into the hole, splashing them with mud, so it was established there was mud in the hole.

What was the deal with the mother/daughter in the meta-plot? The main plot of the film was a story the mother told her kid.
Then wtf was the abandonment scene about?
and what is the implication of the girl walking in the woods near the hole?

The entire mother/daughter sub plot seems to be open to interpretation. The dialogue between them in their first scene does not make sense. For example, the mother out of the blue mentions pajamas, a banana, and calls her daughter a liar for no reason. I really have no idea what it's supposed to mean with regards to the main plot of the movie.

I read a theory that it's supposed to be in the future, and the mother is actually John's older sister as an adult, telling this cautionary tale to her daughter. The timing doesn't work out though, since she tells her daughter that her mother had her when she was 15, and in the main plot it is established that John's mother is 50, with two teenage children.

So in the end I would say a lot of this movie is open to interpretation, one of the reasons I liked it.

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How did he get them down there?

Pretty sure that he threw a lot of pillows soft stuff, threw bodies, set up like they are sleeping, took soft stuff, climbed up and took the ladder.

Was that poop they were playfully smearing on their faces? (like they had psychologically broken to that point?)

Lol, it was the mud.

What was the deal with the mother/daughter in the meta-plot? The main plot of the film was a story the mother told her kid.

I think it was John's mom and she probably had the different mindset like John when she was a child, (John wanted to be alone, but the little girl didn't) but still, it didn't make much sense.

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at that age i woulda threw em all down in a hole to but being the father i woulda threw his little butt right back in the hole. no way in hell am i sitting at the same table as him in the end, weird movie i couldn't cut out on

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Yea, I think most of the replies hit most of your questions. The abandonment scene and all of the stuff with the girl made no sense in my opinion. You say open for interpretation, but I really don’t see much more to this than adolescent attempts to be an adult and distance himself from his family and finally realizing how important they actually are to him (money doesn’t matter as much as he thought and doing all of those ‘grown up’ things really didn’t change him in any way like he hoped). Moreover, the depravation of all the comforts may have had an impact on the rest of the family, but they were still able to cope together while John couldn’t alone.

Really though, the film didn’t work for me. I actually disliked it. Yea, I get that this was a well off family and they wanted to protect their son, but like Rex said above, my dad would’ve beat me senseless, at the very least, for harming his wife and daughter. Doesn’t matter if the boy learned his lesson, the world is going to come down on you hard for harming others. Most parents would takes steps to teach that to their child, be it by physical punishment or through another means like therapy, serious depravation of normal comforts or whatnot. The end really failed to show that in my opinion.

I don’t agree with the 5 rating on IMDb, it’s got some suspense and the acting is ok, but I wouldn’t recommend or rewatch this. It dragged hard throughout, had some scenes that didn’t make any sense and required the viewer to suspend their disbelief to an a degree that was not earned. I would actually give it a 4.

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I honestly don't think any of these questions were answered satisfactorily here, haha. I don't get any of it. And nevermind HOW he got them down there, why didn't they wake up?!?!

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I would add another question. What was all that fuzz between the father and the mother with him asking "What happened with him?" or "What did you do him?" or something like that. It seemed to imply some kind of inappropriate interaction between her and John. Which, added to the weird flirting with Paula, his mother's 50 year old friend, is quite disturbing.

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What was the deal with the mother/daughter in the meta-plot? The main plot of the film was a story the mother told her kid.

I think it's backwards. I felt that the main plot of the film is the mother/daughter, while the "John and the Hole" plot is just a story that the mother is telling her daughter, like the "Charlie and the Spider" story, which is the first one suggested by the mother but the daughter didn't want that one. Similarly, there's a scene with Charles, the gardener, and a spider with a eerie semblance to the "The Scorpion and the Frog" fable, with a similar ending: Charles trust the spider and tells all its virtues but he finally gets bitten.

That would also explain why the "main plot" feels so surreal, too, with so many inconsistencies. A thirteen year old driving around town without anyone noticing. Knowing their parents' ATM PIN number, buying a big TV to play games with no one asking how he could pay for it, or how he got it home. The friend going to stay at home during the weekend without any sign of the parents being worried about him (he came and went in a bus). The tennis preparation for a big state event where he just kicks balls shot by a machine under the supervision of a not-so-professional looking trainer.

It all just feels off.

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