The Hole (2001 film)

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The Hole
Directed byNick Hamm
Written byBen Court
Caroline Ip
Produced byJeremy Bolt
Lisa Bryer
Pippa Cross
StarringThora Birch
Desmond Harrington
Keira Knightley
Daniel Brocklebank
Laurence Fox
Distributed byPathé (UK), Buena Vista (USA direct-to-video)
Release date
20 April 2001 (UK)
Running time
102 min
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Budget£4,158,370[1]

The Hole is a 2001 psychological horror-thriller film directed by Nick Hamm, based on the novel After the Hole by Guy Burt.

The film starred Thora Birch, whose headlining credit and highly-publicized seven-figure salary was attributed to her appearance in American Beauty.[2] It also featured Keira Knightley, in her first significant role in a feature film and British supermodel James Rousseau in a deleted scene at the end designed to set up a possible sequel.

The film premiered in the United Kingdom in April 2001. Dimension Films, which in October 2001 acquired the rights to distribute the film theatrically in the United States, never did so; it was instead released direct-to-video nearly two years later, by Dimension's then-fellow Disney subsidiary Buena Vista Distribution.[3] The film was shot largely in and around Downside School, in Somerset, UK.

Plot

The film opens with the appearance of a disheveled Liz (Birch), one of four English public school pupils, also including Mike (Desmond Harrington), Geoff (Laurence Fox), and Frankie (Keira Knightley), who have been missing for 18 days. Liz is interviewed by a psychiatrist (Embeth Davidtz) and describes the events of the four students in an abandoned, underground shelter during their school break.

Liz describes how she tells Martyn (Daniel Brocklebank) about her unrequited love for Mike and Martyn promises to help. Mike, Geoff, Liz and Frankie show up at an abandoned air-raid shelter, where Martyn explains that they can skip a school trip to Wales. Unbeknownst to the others, Martyn locks the others in after they enter. After three days they realize they are locked in and begin to turn on each other. They eventually realize that Martyn has hidden microphones in the shelter. Voice-acting, Frankie pretends to be sick while Mike and Liz pretend to hate each other. Martyn falls for the trick and unlatches the door, as all of the students leave. Liz's first story turns out to be false and self-serving.

The psychiatrist eventually unearths the truth. Liz locked the group into the shelter. It was a last-minute change to an adolescent plan to win Mike's affection; the locking of the entrance was Liz's spontaneous response to the realization that both Geoff and Mike are attracted to Frankie. Her obsession with him leads her to believe, with time, she could win Mike over. However, things go horribly wrong as Frankie dies from side effects of her bulimia. The group gradually runs out of food and water, and when it is revealed that Geoff is hoarding Coke in his bag, Mike kills Geoff in an uncontrollable outburst of violence. Reduced to two, Mike professes his love for Liz, prompting Liz to climb the ladder towards the shelter's entrance and unlock the door. Perched on a landing high above the shelter's floor, she tells Mike she's had the key all along. Mike is overwhelmed by the events of the past few days and rushes up the ladder, which breaks and he falls to his death.

The psychiatrist learns from the police that Martyn's body had been found near a weir. The audience had earlier seen a confrontation between Liz and Martyn; it turns out that the confrontation ended with a struggle that had resulted in Martyn's drowning. The police find the key to the shelter on Martyn's body; it leads them to conclude that he had committed suicide in response to the deaths in the shelter. The film ends as Martyn's body is taken out from the weir, and Liz smiling towards the psychiatrist and the corpse of the boy she killed.

Cast

Production

Director Nick Hamm calls the film a "triangle of love" and "triangle of obsession"; he believes the "sole reason for the film" can be summed up in a single line spoken by Liz: "Have you ever loved anyone so much you didn't care what happened to yourself?"[4]

References

  1. ^ IMDb estimate
  2. ^ Interview with Birch, just after the film's release in the UK
  3. ^ Preview and Summary from Yahoo! Movies
  4. ^ Director's commentary track for the film

External links

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