Touches You

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

"4 British students get locked in a bunker during their holiday and only one girl was able to make it out alive. It is up to a psychologist to find out exactly what happened leading up to and during their time in that hole."It is really hard to become invested in a movie where the main character is a repulsive, unlikeable megalomaniac.Liz (who is played by Thora Birch of American Beauty) stumbles out of an underground bunker, through the woods and contact the police (where her first unlikeable act is witnessed as she screams into the phone). She is one of four students who went missing during a time where the students were expected to go off on vacation. During character introduction, we come to find out that Mike is her love interest who is an American jock. Geoff is Mike's best friend and Frankie is a bulimic popular girl who comes along for...what ever reason and has no relationship with Liz in what so ever way.It's not exactly specified why instead of going on a proper vacation, they decide to go into an underground bunker. The story that Liz tells the psychologist is that her friend Martin who is very deceitful and can get want he wants, is in love with her but she wants to be with Mike. Martin agrees to help her by getting the four locked into the bunker. After 3 days, Martin is supposed to come back to open it up for them but when he doesn't arrive, they become worried. Fast forward through some nonsense, Liz suspects that Martin is listening in and develops the plot to have the others work along with her acting like they hate her. The reason? She believes that Martin hasn't let them out because she likes Mike instead of him. You know High School nonsense. After the group yell nasty things at each other, the vault door opens and they leave.Martin is brought in for questioning but reveals that he has no clue what they're talking about. Liz and Frankie are friends and her had nothing to do with them going missing as he was out of the country.Upon further one on one unrecorded conversation though, the psychologist gets the real story. Liz reveals that what really happened is Frankie got Geoff to talk Mike into going along with them when Mike really wanted to make up with his girlfriend and that Liz is the one who locked them in the bunker. Her plan was to get Mike to fall in love with her but what she thought would take three days ended up taking almost 3 weeks. Instead of calling off her plan and just unlocking the door, she holds the group hostage but they are completely unaware that she is doing so. The group went through some real issues including not having proper drinking water, not having enough food. Frankie dies due to her bulimic habits catching up with her. Mike kills Geoff out of a fit of anger realizing he has been hiding food and drink. When Liz decides to open the vault after sleeping with Mike, he gets upset and climbs a shifty ladder to get out only for it to collapse and impale him. The movie ends with Liz getting away with it all.That's the reason why I dislike this movie so much is because of the character Liz. She is manipulating, wants to be the center of attention and does things just to get her way. From the very beginning even when she tried to put herself as an innocent participant, I disliked this character. If at the end, she got arrested or better yet, killed, I think I would have liked this movie. But her getting away, just leaves a sour taste in my mouth.A big plot hole and another reason why I started loathing this movie from the very beginning was you see blood and police caution tape at the start of the movie, yet in Liz's first story, she says the four all got out alive when the hatch opened. Now, I guess it could be misinterpreted as the stress caused her to not remember exactly what happened but her saying that they all got out when clearly she was the only one, should have been cause for concern. If she wasn't the prime suspect for falsifying her story, she should have definitely not been allowed to go home due to three people being dead and she was saying that everything was fine.The one surprising thing is you see Keira Knightly breast in this film. Now, you may be thinking "Oh, cool! I always wanted to see them!" but this movie came out in 2001. Keira Knightly would have been around 15 at that time.Overall, good acting by Knightly, Laurence Fox and Desmond Harrington who all played their roles very well and were likable in some scenes but Thora Birch or at least the character of Liz ruined the movie for me. Some parts were good but overall, the story isn't solid and just seems like it was made to create a twist that everyone should have seen coming from a mile away. I am going to say avoid this movie.

Four teens have been missing from their expensive private school for 18 days. Then one of them Liz Dunn (Thora Birch) comes stumbling back to school. She tells police psychologist Dr. Horwood (Embeth Davidtz) a story of desperation. The four teens (Desmond Harrington, Keira Knightley, Laurence Fox) had wanted a private party away from their families and ditch their school trip. They employed the help of Martyn (Daniel Brocklebank) who faked their school records and locked them in an underground bunker. The plan was for him to return after the weekend to unlock the door and let them out. However he never returned.This movie has aspirations of something better. It wants to be a Hitchcock noir. For the first half, it achieves something close to it. However, the movie starts showing the real story, and any mystery disappears.There is a better way this could have gone. Director Nick Hamm probably should have stayed with Embeth Davidtz as she tries to unravel the mystery. If that's the case, he can't really have Thora Birch blab out the story so early on.Then there is the ending. It makes very little sense that anybody could believe Thora Birch's story. The basic premise that these kids would be willing to let themselves be locked up is too hard to believe. The first time they shut the door, they would want to try to test it. The whole thing seems convoluted.

I really cannot write what I think about this movie without revealing some spoilers. However, I will put a note when I get to that spot.This was one of the most engaging films I have seen in a very long time. I made the mistake of watching it while I was studying for an exam. I thought that it wouldn't be interesting enough to pull me away from the studies. However, I ended up getting nothing done for those two hours.Going into this movie with nothing more than a vague description, I had absolutely no idea what to expect. It begins with the idea that Liz is a polite, likable school girl with an unlikely crush. In both the present actions and with the beginning of her story, it seems like the classic lonely girl loves popular boy but is too shy to get him story. Then, right when you are invested in Liz and you believe her friend Martin is a truly twisted and evil jerk, little bits of what really happened start to surface.Liz would have you believe that her story is a story about being in love. But the only thing it really is happens to be a story of selfish obsession taken to unholy depths of depravity. This story is a story about how to be as cold and heartless as you can as long as you get what you think you deserve to have.Spoiler after this line because I want to comment on the ending.I loved this movie up until the end. At the ending, I almost lowered it down to a four star rating, though. The past 15 years there is a trend that the horror villain gets no comeuppance. The ending to "The Hole" reminded me of the ending to "Cry Wolf," even though "The Hole" was released four years earlier.The police are not incompetent enough to have believed that Martin would have committed suicide in the river directly behind Liz's house. Liz is obviously not intelligent enough to murder Martin in such a way that the police would not be able to determine that he was murdered. The police are not stupid enough to believe that Liz's doctor would take her down into the hole and then fall for her whiny "help, help" when they came and saw Liz and her doctor down in the hole.This movie gives us absolutely no reason to believe that the ending is credible. It paints everyone as stupid except for Liz. The problem with this is that Liz is stupid. The only way she was able to keep them trapped in a hole is because she hid the key. And she further believed it was worth it for her best friend and best friend's boyfriend to die so she could be with someone who obviously thinks nothing of her.At least in Cry Wolf, the story was set up in a way that may have fooled investigators. "The Hole's" ending relies on the premise that the police and everyone are stupid and that you're stupid enough to not question it. It's a shame because until that happens, this was a first rate movie all the way.

The Hole is a psychological thriller film directed by Nick Hamm that is based on the novel After the Hole by Guy Burt wherein a fun-filled getaway for four teenagers becomes a season in Hell in this tense British thriller.It stars Thora Birch,Desmond Harrington and Keira Knightley together with Daniel Brocklebank,Embeth Davidtz and Laurence Fox.Liz Dunn is a student at an exclusive private school who is head over heels for Mike Steel, a handsome classmate whose father is a well-known American rock star. Liz, however, is self-conscious about her looks and is convinced Mike would rather be with the prettier girls in her class. Liz is also unenthusiastic about an upcoming field trip, in which she and the other students will have to camp out for three days while studying local geography. Liz confesses her infatuation with Mike to Martin Taylor, a science-minded geek and longtime friend who happens to be in love with Liz, though she prefers to ignore it. Martin proposes a solution to both of Liz's problems; he's found an underground bunker built during World War II near the school grounds, and he arranges a little party in which Liz and Mike will spend the three days of the field trip in the bunker, with class couple Geoff and Frankie going along, giving Liz a perfect chance to impress Mike with her charm. The students lay in a supply of food, water, and booze to last them for three days, but after 72 hours, they discover they've been locked in, and they're not sure if Martin intends to let them out.The last 45-minutes of The Hole are so entertaining, so creepy that it's easy to forget how lame the first hour due to the fact that it has a good ambiguous premise but comes apart when it must reach a conclusion if its protagonist, Liz Dunn is a psychopath or a victim.Also,it is more of a is really more character study than thriller particularly that of the character of Liz with her obsession and evolving motivations.This obviously saves the movie from a complete disaster particularly since it fails as a thriller.