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The Hole [2001] NB: this review unavoidably reveals a great many of the plot surprises of The Hole, and should perhaps best be read after viewing the film. With its striking opening, as a bloodily bedraggled Thora Birch staggers through a village past the 'child missing' posters that show her smiling self, and Rashomon-structured flashbacks - alternately fantasies, outright lies, self-serving slantings, subjective and honest memories and horrid revelations - The Hole cannily delays until quite near the end the penny-dropping realisation that this is another in the Psycho Bitch From Hell sub-genre of horror movie [cf: Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle]. Indeed, it is the latest in a sub-sub-genre of Gidget-Gone-Bad films that discover the psychotic potential of ostensibly innocent girls, from the elevenish villain of The Bad Seed to the killer teen queens of Pretty Poison, Poison Ivy and The Crush. Birch evokes those American stars who popped up in 1950s British films to lend 'overseas appeal' [Brian Donlevy in The Quatermass Experiment], but manages a very creditable Jenny Agutter accent and delivers a multi-faceted reading of a role that grows with each plot permutation, never overdoing the occasional eye-narrowing that tips us off when she's lying. The way her first, utterly mendacious, account of what has happened in the missing weeks presents her as essentially the same character she played in American Beauty is an exceedingly cunning piece of misdirection. In Martin's precis of life at Brabourne, the only flashback not to come out of Liz's mind, Birch acts like a vampish slut reincarnation of the pigblood-tippers from Carrie, reflecting this narrator's view of her. The most truthful of the flashbacks makes her a deeper, more conflicted character, not thinking too far ahead but resourceful in turning dreadful reversals to her advantage and, in the end, a stone sociopath clearly set for success in life. One might question [as Liz does herself, putting words into the mouth of her made-up Martin] why such a powerful young woman is hung up on the dullish Mike, whose most glamorous attribute is that his father is a rock legend, but even this makes some sort of psychological sense. Less credible is the resistance the outclassed youth puts up, which we are supposed to believe is because of his unseen supermodel girlfriend - though, again, Liz has ascribed to Martin the truism that the rugby scrums Mike and Geoff take part in are all homoerotic ritual, suggesting another reading of the sexual cross-currents of the four teenagers in the Hole. Working from Guy Burt's 1993 novel After the Hole, screenwriters
Ben Court and Caroline Ip and director Nick Hamm [Martha Meet Frank,
Daniel and Laurence] don't just rely on performance and narrative trickery
to get their effects. The first version of what has happened is light
suspense on the Goosebumps level, with the partying teens telling ghost
stories [Geoff spooks Frankie with 'what if something happens to Martin?']
and putting on an act for the eavesdropper to convince him that his
plan has worked. The second, extended take is a more gruelling, Blair
Witchish exercise in collapse and degeneration with the four players
convincingly coming apart in their traps and the hole itself, cleverly
art-directed by Eve Stewart, an impressive and unsettling location that
keeps throwing the characters back at each other. Birch's scariest moment
comes as she keeps up a flow of teen gossip, still fancying her chances
with Mike, as Frankie vomits her life away in a filthy toilet next to
her. There are contrivances around the climax, with the deaths of Geoff
and Mike coming through a concealed stash of drink ['I killed my best
friend … over a Coke!'] and a faulty ladder, but these suggest
that even at her most honest, Liz is still lying somehow, still slanting
events to minimise her guilt. The one murder she definitely commits
is only partially shown, and never admitted to as Martin's drowning
is passed off as suicide. Along with Rob Green's physically similar
The Bunker, The Hole finds a way to revive the British horror tradition
without rattling too many of the genre's old skeletons, and using well-drawn
characters from settings underused in the cinema but nevertheless potent
in British mythology [in The Bunker, a Sven Hassel-style
Nazi platoon; here, an expensive but gruelling public school]. The eponymous
setting is not only the literal trap, but also the void in the psyche
of a protagonist who can feel guilt but not so keenly that she feels
she should take the blame. First Published In: Sight & Sound vol.11 no.5 [May 2001] p.52 Visit Kim's Official Website at www.johnnyalucard.com
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