Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire!
There are a lot of classic tropes in movies in general, and there are genre expectations in terms of plot. There are also set-ups that we see over and over again because they work. For the horror genre, one of the most classic of tropes is the idea of a group of teens or 20-somethings heading out to the middle of nowhere and then something terrible happens. The “people in the middle of nowhere” trope goes back to the silent era, or at least the earliest talkies. In later years and with the rise of more gonzo horror, it happened more and more. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th, and Evil Dead wouldn’t exist without this trope. The Hole takes this basic idea and attempts to do something a little different with it.
We start with the rescue of boarding school student Liz (Thora Birch), who is the only survivor of a group of four who have been missing for nearly three weeks. Through a series of interviews with a psychologist (Embeth Davidtz). The story we get from Liz is that her friend Martin (Daniel Brockelbank) has discovered a fallout shelter in the middle of the forest nearby and has a key for it. Liz wants quality time with the school stud, Mike (Desmond Harrington), and arranges for her friend Frankie (Keira Knightley) and her mancrush Geoff (Laurence Fox) to go with them during a school field trip. Their parents think they are on the trip; the school thinks they are with their parents.
According to Liz’s story, Martin, who had the key and had locked them in, didn’t return for them because he is secretly in love with Liz. They also found microphones planted around the shelter, so they fake Frankie being ill so that he will be guilted into coming back for them, and one day, the door is unlocked. Of course, this doesn’t explain why Liz is the only survivor.
So, we’re going to Rashomon this out. Naturally questioned by the police after Liz’s story, Martin has a very different story to tell. In his world, he is the loner and Liz is one of the extremely popular kids, used to getting her way simply because of who she is. It’s she who demanded that the weekend be set up so that she could get that alone time with Mike, who is persuaded to go because of Frankie. And then, of course, we’ll get a new version of events that take place in the shelter, with this third iteration being by far the darkest, and thus pure spoiler territory.
There are some really interesting and fun aspects of The Hole that are worth a good amount of praise. The whole Rashomon thing happens enough that it’s not unexpected when it happens, but this one does it pretty well, especially since two of the stories are essentially coming from the same person. Putting the kids in a nuclear fallout shelter where things are quickly going to take a dive south is also a good twist. There’s no axe wielding psychopath here, no redneck zombie torture family. There aren’t even any creepy crawlies hiding in the back of the fallout shelter—it’s just these four kids and whatever is going on in their minds.
It does end up being predictable. I won’t say I knew where it was going at the start of the movie, but I got to the end before the movie did, because there was really only one place for it to go. It wants very hard to add a sort of The Usual Suspects twist here, but since that kind of twist isn’t uncommon, it’s not that hard to see coming. There aren’t really a lot of places it can go, especially since it is established early on that there isn’t anything supernatural or paranormal happening here. It’s just…four kids in a fallout shelter who can’t get out.
A larger issue—and this is a much larger issue in many ways—is the nudity. You can be as excited as you like for the fact that there is legitimate nudity of Keira Knightley in this film…until you realize a couple of things. First, The Hole was made in 2001. Second, Keira Knightley was born in 1985. Uncomfortable yet? Yep—she was 15 in that scene.
The Hole would be a decent movie without that particular bit of information, but there’s no getting around it, and that makes this essentially impossible to recommend, no matter how good it might otherwise be, and no matter how rare it is to see Thora Birch before her career imploded.
Why to watch The Hole: A solid twist on a classic trope.
Why not to watch: Ephebophilia.