 |
||||
|
The Hole [2001] Adapted from the novel After the Hole by then-teenage novelist Guy Burt, this is a creepy Rashomon- style tale of dastardly deeds at one of those public schools your parents have to be a] really wealthy and b] really unfond of you to get you into. It opens with Liz [Thora Birch, with acceptable accent] stumbling bloodied into the school chapel after some weeks on the missing list, and then flashes back as she explains how she - along with American Mike [Desmond Harrington], bulimic blonde Frankie [Kiera Knightley] and rugby jock Geoff [Laurence Fox] - came to be trapped in a disused World War II bunker rather than on a Geography field trip. She explains that she set up a weekend party with the help of nerdy fixer Martin [Daniel Brocklebank], but the jealous, speccy kid upped and left the quartet locked in. Just as you've lost patience with the demand that you believe the gorgeous Birch could [as in American Beauty] be deemed the mousy, unattractive one, Martin is apprehended and tells his own, more lurid version - in which Liz is the manipulative bitch queen of the school, and kept the trio locked up because she was trying to cop off with Mike. We get several goes through the story, with the truth emerging in tranches,
and good, unsettling horror stuff in close quarters as flashbacks show
various versions of the posh kids descending into Big Brother/Blair
Witch mutual recriminations and claustrophobe panic. It's a
gimmick story, but director Nick Hamm [of the ordinary Martha,
Meet Frank, Daniel and Laurence] gets the best out of his talented
young cast, plays canny games with the teen genre [for once, it's one
of the blokes who has to do the gratuitous nude scene] and makes the
eponymous setting a genuinely horrid locale. First Published In: Venue [issue unknown] Visit Kim's Official Website at www.johnnyalucard.com
|
||||