Another cinematic treat exclusively for Canadian readers ; The Hole, a 2001 British thriller, comes to DVD in a trigged-out edition from Seville Pictures.

Think about the worst school field trip you were ever forced to go on ; to what lengths would you go to get out of it? Doesn't a couple of days away from school and parents, just wasting time with your friends, sound like the best possible teenagers' weekend? That's the seed of The Hole, set at an English boarding school, and the destination for the particular trip is ; horrors ; Wales. (Apparently British youth will do anything not to have to go to Wales, the movie assures us.) To pick up a few extra quid and to take care of some of the snotty kids for the weekend, Martin has a plan: for the right price, he's got the perfect way to avoid the field trip. Tell the school you're going home; tell Mom and Dad you're going on the field trip; they'll all be none the wiser. And so where to hide? He has conveniently found an elaborate underground shelter of sorts, with plumbing, lights and everything ; the hole of the title. Along for the subterranean getaway is Mike (Desmond Harrington), the sole American at the school, dashingly handsome, son of a rock star, who has conveniently just broken up with his girlfriend; Jeff (Laurence Fox), his best pal; Frankie (Keira Knightley), the sexy blonde thing who's impossibly popular, and goes out with Jeff; and poor little Liz, played by Thora Birch ; Liz carries a torch big time for Mike, who doesn't even notice her. Helpfully enough, Liz and Martin are best pals, so he's all too happy, despite his own crush on her, to put her in with the others for the weekend lockup. Will you be shocked to learn that something goes horribly wrong? When we meet them, Liz is under intense questioning from a police psychiatrist, and Martin is under even more suspicion, by the cops themselves, for being the prime mover behind the disastrous underground events. It's their competing stories, and the gradual understanding of just what happened in the hole, that makes up the bulk of the film. Without giving too much away, early on especially it's hard to know who's telling the truth, and some of the central events are played out for us more than once, with the point of view changed. At its best, the movie is sort of an English prep school Survivor told in the manner of Rashomon. Unfortunately it's not always at its best, and the structure is a peculiar one; it's tough, for instance, to maintain the suspense when every character in the movie, from the very beginning, know the horrors that we don't learn until the last twenty minutes. (Though given who we hear from, and who we don't, it's not too tough to guess the bad stuff that might have gone down.) The framing story, the adults investigating the dangerous adolescent hijinks, is, I suppose, necessary, but perhaps a more pleasing, organic way to open up the tale could have been found. (A couple of plot and setup questions will continue to baffle you, too ; for instance, why is this very American son of a famous rock star going to school in Great Britain?)

Picture: As you might imagine with a movie during which much of the action takes place in an underground bunker, lots of The Hole takes place in the dark. The good news is that the black levels are solid and consistent; the bad news is, make sure the room in which you're watching the movie is as dark as possible, or else you're liable to miss a lot of the action. The widescreen ratio isn't always put to good use, and given that it's a pretty claustrophobic motion picture, I'm not sure what a wise directorial choice this was. And unless your television is mighty big, there are sure to be little bits in frame that you'll miss at home. Sound: The music is jacked up a bit too high for my taste, and it's a little too indicating ; it clues us in far too often that something bad is going to happen. Also, dynamics are sometimes a little funky; during a couple of scenes in the cave, the characters are whispering, and it's close to impossible to make out what they're saying without jacking up the volume unreasonably high.

Ten minutes of deleted scenes are included, and they all seem to have been prudently edited out. (Many of them concern the framing story, the police investigating the incident; also wisely dispatched is an unnecessary "One Year Later" coda.) Also here is an original trailer, as well as trailers for three other films (Angel, Eye of the Beholder, and Mexico City); an Image Gallery, with stills from the set shown over music from the soundtrack, for a minute or so; brief bios and the director, Nick Hamm, and three of the leading actors, as well as selected filmographies. (Curiously, Thora Birch's biography downplays American Beauty, surely her most prominent performance to date.) Hamm also provides a commentary track, and his insights are sometimes sharp, though he does meander a bit.

The Hole is a stylish bit of filmmaking, with some show-offy aspects that don't entirely compensate for some of the story problems. Still, this is a handsome DVD from Seville for Canadian film fans, with a generous dollop of extras; and surely it's a movie that deserves a home release on the south side of the border.