Horror Review: "The Hole" (2001, Straight-to-DVD Release)

Once you finish your childish fit of laughing over the title, (it took ME a little while), this movie might be worth a watch in your Netflix Instant Queue. It was apparently SUPPOSED to be a nationwide theatrical release, but didn’t make it. I’m not sure why; it isn’t terrible. It’s just…weird.

Thora Birch is definitely a plus. She brings a lot to the role of Liz, the main character you feel sorry for and identify with at first, but then waver on when you realize you don’t know if you can actually trust her. The movie takes place at a private school in the UK and is sort of split into two halves, as you’re told two different versions of what has transpired. One by Liz, who survived a terrible ordeal, and another by her supposed best friend Martyn, who may or not be partially responsible for said ordeal.

The basic, not-TOO-spoilery rundown of the barebones plot is this: Liz, (Thora Birch), is an unpopular girl in a school ruled by popular girls. (Sound familiar?) She has somehow stumbled upon this super weird, abandoned underground bomb shelter type thing near the campus that appears to lock from the outside but is huge enough for a large group of people to comfortably inhabit, and she is desperate to spend time with this campus superstar guy named Mike who she’s convinced she’s in love with. SO, Liz coerces Mike, his other hotshot guy friend Geoff, and queen bitch popular girl Frankie (played by Kiera Knightley in what was apparently her first movie role), into ditching a class trip and instead spending a night LOCKED inside this dusty, cold underground hole type thing drinking and debauching. And yeah, since it locks from the OUTSIDE, Martyn is supposed to come let them out the next morning. (Brilliant plan, right?)

Of course, it doesn’t go as Liz had hoped. Martyn doesn’t show up. The door won’t open. The interesting thing about the movie is, are there monsters in there with them? Nope. Ghosts? Nope. There’s just some fucked up shit that happens as a result of four people being trapped in a dark space together for days and days. And then, Liz is the only survivor, and the second half of the movie is a retelling of the same events but from Martyn’s perspective. Who is telling you the truth? It was this whole aspect of the movie that I found interesting.

The downside: You DO have to wait until the last half hour or so of the movie to actually see the awful truth and experience the terrible fates of the characters. The first half of it is a bit slow. Also, even though stranger things have happened, the premise itself is a tiny bit difficult to believe. There’s scarcely a less appealing place to hang out and party than the dirty prison of a bomb shelter these kids choose. They go into it with the belief that the thing locks from the outside, and they’re okay with it. (Really?) Also, once you find out one of the main character’s TRUE motive’s his/her choices come across as blatantly idiotic. Even if you find yourself siding with this character, you may end up saying out loud, “You DO realize that if you had done ________ you could have avoided _________, right?” Or maybe I only participate so actively because I watch these movies alone, and I criticize people very harshly sometimes.

However, as I mentioned earlier, Thora Birch does do a great job with Liz, who’s pretty complex right up to the end. You’re unsure about her the entire time, and she does a great bit of acting with a very unhinged monologue once the shit starts to hit the fan. This movie has some pretty good “What the fuck are these crazy people doing?” moments, and I liked that they actually WERE done by people rather than spirits or vampires or the usual horror fodder. That sort of thing is difficult to pull off. Also, the actor who plays Mike, the love interest, looks like he could have played a young Superman had “Smallville” been cast differently. Very blue eyes, ladies! BE WARNED, though, there is a random shower scene midway through the movie with some full frontal gratuitous peen. (And no, it’s not Mike’s.)

I give this movie Three out of Five pints of blood, for the originality of the concept and the level of twisted achieved by both the ending and the a certain character’s true motives. Worth a watch if you’re bored and you have Netflix.

Movie Review: "Grave Encounters"

Watching this movie was kind of weird for me, because I had a sort of biased opinion towards the concept. Only because one of my closest friends from my teen years and beyond is now a regular cast member on “Ghost Hunters” on the Sci-Fi Network. (I refuse to spell it that weird new way they’re doing it these days.) I’m not entirely sure what the filmmakers’ motives were, here, as I’m writing the review simply as a horror movie FAN who watched a movie. (I didn’t do thorough research into behind the scenes stuff or read interviews with the director, etc. This is just my opinion after seeing it.) So I have to wonder if the concept for “Grave Encounters” was born at least partially out of a strong dislike for shows such as “Ghost Hunters,” OR if it was a matter of sticking to a story that took advantage of one location and a small budget that was perfect for the “found footage” genre of indie horror. Perhaps maybe even a combination of the two.

I only wonder because the movie starts out with the characters clearly acknowledging themselves as phony, having found no evidence of anything supernatural so far on their fake television series of the same name as the film. The main character, Lance Preston, immediately comes across as a douchebag who has absolutely no interest in the paranormal so much as he simply loves the spotlight, and he has no qualms with asking “eyewitnesses” to make up fake stories about the asylum his team is about to investigate. My initial reaction to him was, are we as viewers supposed to dislike him so that when awful things inevitably happen to him, we’ll not only be okay with it but maybe even celebrate a bit? On the other hand, I admittedly might have found him more obnoxious because of what I know about investigative teams on these shows. Like them or not, they actually do NOT fake anything that they report or set out to create fake experiences for the sake of exciting television. Anyways, back to the movie.  

The likable factor was a different case with the other two lead characters, Sasha and Matt. As the three take a walking tour of the asylum in the daylight and are told about the things that happened there and the paranormal sightings that have supposedly occurred, Sasha comes across as a sympathetic human being and Matt is more of a goofball than anything else. They do, unfortunately, bring along a 100 % phony balones psychic medium named Houston Grey, and he’s pretty annoying throughout the entire movie. Just an FYI.

The action is a bit slow at first. A lot of it is the crew setting up for their shoot and establishing that, although the rundown asylum is definitely creepy and has a dark past, they don’t REALLY expect anything to happen. But they ready their equipment anyway.  Static cameras on each floor, etc. The three investigators, the medium, and another team member are locked inside the building with no way out until someone comes to unlock the doors in the early morning hours. I will say that for a while, I was NOT impressed with this movie at all. I’m trying to keep plot specifics out of the picture for the most part in this review, but I’ll go ahead and let you know that the first “scary” thing that happens to them as a sign of activity is a door slamming. I thought, “If the rest of the movie is going to be this sort of thing, I’m going to be pretty bored.” After all, this came out in 2011, post “Paranormal Activity.” You’ve got to approach this type of thing with either more extreme scares OR a different and more creative approach. Right?

Well, “Grave Encounters” luckily takes a turn in the latter direction and puts a very interesting spin on things. It doesn’t just stick with the idea of the building being haunted. It also plays heavily on the psychological affects that the surroundings begin to have on the crew, and they start to question their OWN sanity rather than simply look for spirits. It definitely adds to the creepiness factor and gives you some things that you don’t necessarily expect. I liked some of the creative choices they made.

The special effects are a mixed bag. Early on in the film, there are some makeup effects on patients in “old footage” that look pretty fake and rushed. Later on, some ghost effects do look creepy but also seem a bit too obviously CGI’d if you look closely. HOWEVER, very late into the film there is a surprising and bizarre scene that definitely made the hairs on my arms stand up a little bit, and looked VERY unnerving. It was a cool idea and they executed it nicely.

I actually did end up feeling bad for most of the characters. (The main three, primarily. Even the douchebag, Lance. Though not QUITE so much for him as I did for Sasha and Matt.)

Overall, I don’t think this film really got to me that much until the end. There is a scene in particular in which a character resorts to something pretty shocking and repulsive in an attempt to survive that I was NOT expecting, and the visual really stuck with me. The final scenes proceeded from there into unnerving territory that, while a bit hokey and gimmicky, still managed to disturb me just a tad given the subject matter. I won’t spoil it, but let’s just say there are certain aspects of mental illness that have always frightened me because they actually have happened.

If you enjoy the shaky cam, “found footage” genre and the “Paranormal Activity” movies but would like something with a slightly different spin, this one might be worth a watch. I don’t think it’s going to blow you away, but there are some good moments in there. I rate it Three and a Half out of Five Pints of Blood.