THE HOLE

Directed by Nick Hamm
Written by Ben Court & Caroline Ip
Produced by Lisa Bryer & Jeremy Bolt
Cast: Thora Birch, Desmond Harrington, Daniel Brocklebank, Laurence Fox, Keira Knightley & Embeth Davidtz

2000/102 mins/Color/2.0 Dolby Surround
2.35:1 anamorphic/English/UK/NTSC Region 1

Review from the Seville DVD

While the others are on a trip, four students of a British private school decide to have a party of their own in an abandoned bomb shelter. Liz (the ever convincing Thora Birch) is deeply in love with Mike (Harrington), she's the one behind this rather unusual idea of a party. Things starts out nicely but the deeper she falls in love with him the stronger she will be willing to give away everything... and everyone for his love.

The film starts out with Liz who's the only survivor "retelling" what happened in the bunker. As detectives dig through the various informations and clues they have, they find more then they imagined at first.

Don't worry I didn't really spoiled anything, the twist is predictable within the first 15 minutes. The trailer sold this one almost as a monster in a bunker flick but it is anything but this. What we have here is an average teen "thriller" which is a little more interesting then the usual stuff... why?! Well, Birch and Knightley are always nice eye candy, the "shelter" is kinda cool and creepy but it is barely exploited within the film which is a shame. The acting is good and so is the cinematography, its the screenplay that could have used more work. The film isn't bad but could have been so much more.

Seville's image presentation is very nice, the film is correctly framed at 2.35:1 and features an anamorphic transfer. There is no signs of compression or artifacts, colors are well rendered which is always nice especially with a film with so much dark scenes. There's an English and French 2.0 Dolby Surround tracks, both of them are nicely mixed and well balanced giving the film all the atmosphere it needs. There's a commentary track with the director, Nick Hamm. While he sounds like a nice guy, he talks v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y and is a little boring even though he goes into pretty much all the details of the making of the film, maybe another person with him on the track would have made things more lively. We get 9 deleted scenes, some of them who are longer version of what appeared in the film while others didn't make the final cut at all. The "Image Gallery" is pretty basic and useless since its features only capture screens of the film. "Cast and Crew" features bios on... well you can figure that out don't you. There's also the theatrical trailer which is quite good but don't reflect the film at all and trailers for five other films released in Canada by Seville.

The film is separated in 24 chapters, comes in keep case with a reversible English and French cover, there is no booklet or inlay card and features nicely done and stylish animated menus.

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Review by Kim Dubuisson. All Right Reserved. 2003. ©