The Hole (2001)

Summary: Seeking to avoid a school trip to Wales, Liz (Thora Birch), Mike (Desmond Harrington), Frankie (Keira Knightley), and Geoff (Laurence Fox) take a secret vacation in an abandoned bunker. When only Liz returns after 18 days, the police suspect foul play from a fellow student, Martyn (Daniel Brocklebank). Unfortunately, it quickly becomes clear that Liz is no longer able to separate fiction from reality after her ordeal, leaving Dr. Philippa Horwood (Embeth Davidtz) to sort it out.

Okay, so I basically rented this movie because . . . wait, I should preface this:

Caution: Spoilers Ahead!

That said, I basically rented this movie because I knew Knightley's character would end up dead, and I was hoping Birch's would kill her. There would be certain poetic, filmic (if you will) justice in that, don't you think?

Dreams come true!

But that also makes it a flawed movie. If I could divine all of that from the cover, imagine how paper thin the rest of plot was. Even if I bear in mind that this is the first (and seemingly only) offering from Ben Court and Caroline Ip (writers), that doesn't excuse the transparent plot and characters.

I mean, don't the words soul survivor mean anything to you? They mean killer to me. How else would someone survive being locked in somewhere for that long and be the only one to escape? Only one person on the outside knew where they were, and he was so obviously not a killer.

Also, right at the beginning, Birch doesn't escape running. She walks. I'm sure she's tired and all, but, if she were afraid, she would have ran. In fact, her lumber suggests not only dehydration but also boredom.

The worst bit is her incapability to come up with plausible lies for what happened. I mean, honestly, how hard could it be? I'm fairly certain that Emily and I came up with two more believable options each than Birch's clear drivel.

Not that I'm blaming Birch. She does her very best and almost nails her British accent.

I'm not too sure what Nick Hamm (director) is up to here. He obviously doesn't care if you figure out what's going on from the get-go, nor does he seem interested in inspiring believable performances from his actors.

So overall - definitely not worth the rental fee. Unless you pay people to annoy you, which I find many, many people happily do for free.