THE HOLE tells the tale of four British public (here it would be prep) school students messing around in an old bomb shelter. They accidentally get locked in. After several days, they begin to die off one by one. The lone survivor, played by Thora (GHOST WORLD) Birch, relates her horrific tale as the movie unfolds to investigators, including a doctor (Embeth Davidtz) who follows Birch through her recovery and eventually takes her back down into the shelter. A fellow student who led the four to the shelter is suspected of having locked them in, but has disappeared. This low-budget effort is less a horror flick than a psychological thriller, sort of HIGH TENSION without the barbed-wire baseball bat, although it has its share of grue and contains a couple of highly squeamish moments, the worst involving a pre-PIRATES Keira Knightley. It may remind some of SAW, and I would say rightly so. The end is a shocker, and Birch acts up a storm. Made about five years ago, this is some nasty stuff.