Marketed as a kind of British 'Blair Witch Project' The Hole is actually nothing of the sort. It is not a mock-umentary about a bunch of stupid kids lost in the woods. It is in-fact, a taught thriller about a bunch of stupid kids stuck down a bunker in the woods. It also happens to be a pretty good film, not as good as Blair Witch, but pretty damn good all the same.

Criminally still unreleased in the USA, The Hole paints a picture of youth culture dropped into a nightmare situation. How would the standard teen stereotypes that we see in endless vacuous gross-out comedies and by-the-numbers ugly duckling romcoms survive when it all goes 'Lord of the Flies'? The film gives us the geeky female teen, the chiseled good looking jock, the dumb jock and the beautiful, but slutty cheerleader type that we all know so well and drops them into a great big dirty hole for two and a half weeks.

We watch as they disintegrate before our very eyes, they become sick, they fight, and they have sex. It's what we would like to see on Big Brother, but never seem to get. Not only do you get all this, but around halfway through the film we realise that we are in the company of our good old cinematic friend, the unreliable narrator. Is everything that we have seen actually how things happened? From that moment on you no longer trust anything you see without thinking long and hard about the reliability of its source. The film goes on and on throwing you tidbits here and there and genuinely keeps you guessing right up to the brash finale.

The Hole is the kind of film that rarely gets made in the UK. It's not a 'safe' film and the UK film industry is notorious for not taking risks. How else do you explain the glut of fluffy romcoms and lame gangster movies? What this film does show is that when we do take a chance we can make a bloody good film. The Hole evokes memories of British films past like 'Shallow Grave', 'Trainspotting' and 'Velvet Goldmine'. Films that didn't conform, that dared to be different and that were among the best British films to come from the last ten years. If The Hole isn't quite good enough to be mentioned along with these films, then it's a close run thing.

There are a few problems with this film and depressingly they are quite serious. The lion’s share of the film takes place in the titular hole. This means that for about 80% of the movie we are in the company of the four main teens. If you consider that two out of the four teens struggle in the acting stakes then you have a big flaw.

Lawrence Fox whom plays Geoff is a big lad, but he really can't act for toffee. He just about convinces as a dumb rugby player, but ask him to emote and he falters badly. The same can be said of Keira Knightly whom plays popular blonde Frankie. Sure, she looks great (really great), but she really struggles with the more emotional scenes.

Luckily the Ying to their Yang exists in the shape of Thora Birch and her male co-star Desmond Harrington. Birch sports a faultless English accent and continues to solidify her place as one of young Hollywood’s most interesting actresses. With this film, Ghost World and American Beauty this clearly talented young woman has a CV that actresses twice her age would kill for. Let’s hope she continues to choose her projects wisely.

Desmond Harrington plays the hot young jock; he is American and is an actor that I feel is worth keeping an eye on. As the time in the hole goes on you see the emotion in his eyes, the hunger, and the thirst. He has a nice look about him and given the right chances I feel he could do well.

Whilst the story is good, with many twists and some interesting moments, the script itself is at times truly shocking. Jammed to the rafters with the kind of cheesy dialogue that a soap opera would be embarrassed to include, it really brings the film down a peg or two. Give the film to a decent scriptwriter to inject some humanity into the script, rather than obvious and clichéd dialogue and the film would have benefited greatly.

If you have seen director Nick Hamm's previous film 'Martha meet Frank, Daniel and Lawrence' then The Hole will be something of a shock. His previous film was a fluffy, but vaguely enjoyable romcom, where he suddenly developed the style that he display's in this film is anyone’s guess. Using handheld cameras and some fancy editing, Hamm generates a brilliant feeling of claustrophobia during the scenes inside the hole. Kudos should also go to cinematographer Denis Crosan, his lighting of the hole really adds to the feeling of enclosure. We get a feeling for how big the bunker is, but through clever use of light Crosan makes it feel bigger or smaller depending on the need of the scene.