Five horror clichés in The Hole in the Ground trailer

Critics are calling Irish horror film The Hole in the Ground this year's Hereditary, yet on the evidence of the trailer alone it looks like a by-the-numbers horror movie.

While the trailer for Jordan Peele's Us promised us a bizarre set-up and arresting imagery, The Hole in the Ground ticked off an impressive number of horror clichés in its two and a half minute runtime.

Yet Hole has already been picked up by horror powerhouse A24 (Hereditary, The Witch, It Comes at Night) following its Sundance premiere, so doubtless it's destined for great things.

But if, like us, you're thinking that Lee Cronin's debut feature sounds a bit like every other scary movie you've seen in the past few years, here's five tropes it's "borrowed" from recent horror films.

1) Let's move to a house in the middle of nowhere

We get that house prices are through the roof – but come on! We completely get why Pyewacket's Leah is pissed off at her mother's impulsive decision to move to a lonely house in the forest; it's clearly an insane idea.

On the other hand, the kids in Netflix's The Haunting of Hill House are unusually sunny about moving to a clearly sinister pile which for some reason is full of creepy statues and doorknobs with faces. There's a reason these properties come cheap.

James Quinn Markey's Chris is understandably in a funk at having to leave his friends behind. But things are about to get a whole lot worse for him...

2) The kids are not alright

There's a reason why The Exorcist regularly tops Best Horror of All Time polls – we're just obsessed with creepy children.

The Hole in the Ground seems to have borrowed The Babadook's tense single parent family dynamic, with a put-upon matriarch left with nowhere to turn as her spawn turns demonic.

Seána Kerslake's Sarah will most likely mirror Toni Collette's slow unravelling in Hereditary, getting increasingly fraught and a bit shouty in an effort to control her kid's wayward behaviour.

3) The woods are full of evil

The horror genre often makes a compelling case for deforestation. From the paranoid puritans of The Witch to the unhappy campers of The Ritual, venturing into the foliage rarely ends well.

When Chris legs it off into the trees, we know things won't end well. The woods, as we know, are full of witches, spirits and general malcontents.

4) A character disappears and returns home changed

One of the hidden treasures currently on Shudder is Honeymoon. Two newylweds relationship heads south when Bea goes for a midnight walk in the woods (naturally) and returns home disturbingly changed.

Alex Garland's sci-fi horror Annihilation also kicks off with Oscar Isaac's Kane returning home only to star blankly, avoid questions and rapidly sicken.

The fear that our loved ones are not who we think they are also permeates The Hole in the Ground. Is Chris "an imposter", or merely a misbehaving little git?

5) The violins are a-scratching

It's a universal truth: arty indie horror trailers must have scratchy, pizzicato violins as their soundtrack. Hereditary, It Comes at Night, Suspiria – all proudly announce themselves as suspenseful, upmarket horror by punishing string instruments.

The Hole in the Ground is no different (although we do get a creepy folk song too). We'd rather have the Us trailer's incredibly creepy remix of Luniz's 'I Got 5 On It' any day.

It's not just the pre-teens that have it tough in the horror genre. Find out how various adolescents have premonitions of their imending doom in their English Lit classes.

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