The Hole

Competition Title

We have 3 VHS copies to be won, courtesy of Fox Pathe Home entetainment. Just tell us the name of a British clergyman held prisoner by the Hezbollah.

email

A young woman dress in tattered clothes and covered in blood, staggers down a street toward a grand old building. The street is lined with memorial flowers and photos of missing students. Eventually she reaches the building and goes inside. She gets to the public phones and calls 999 - when asked for what service she seeks she releases a blood curdling scream and collapses to the floor.

This is the opening to what could have been a gripping and terrifying tale. Tension and mystery is maintained quite well up to the half way point but sadly the film degenerates once the secret becomes obvious. Four students of an exclusive boarding school go missing for 18 days and eventually one girl returns and the others are dead. In the same vain as the 'Blair Witch Project II', the question arises. What happened? What caused their deaths and what secret lies behind the obviously haunted young girl?

Interesting camera techniques are employed to heighten the tension and at first an insurmountable number of scenarios build up in your head expecting the worst. Sadly the truth is not as frightening as ones imagination. Shown through flashbacks, fantasy and fact are mixed into the story that two principal characters tell the police and psychiatrist. The bodies were found in an old bunker built for the war, which was left abandoned. Trapped inside the bunker after entering for a fun couple of days hiding away from a school trip, the four are subjected to hunger, dehydration, paranoia and finally into a degenerative state of dementia. Truth gets blurred and the story slowly unfolds to tell of two people's obsessive love. Such obsessive love can be dangerous yet whose was the cause for this nightmare?

From a story written by a teenager the issues raised about social acceptance and life as a teenager are on target. The acting is at times clunky but passable. The real talent however lies in the direction. Hamm's handling of the tension and the scenes leading up to the final truth are so deftly handled we can be sure to see more form this up and coming film maker.