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The Hole
Rating: 4 Stars
Written and directed by Wash West. Cinematography by Paul Sunnyside. Edited by Andrew Rosen. Music by The Bowling Green. Starring Tag Eriksson, Josh Hammer, Jason Adonis, Derec Lang, Vince Taylor, Sam Tyson, Adam Killian, T.J. Hart, Jeremy Tucker, Anthony Holloway, Trent Atkins, and others.
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First there was Ringu, a Japanese horror film by Hideo Nakata. Then there was The Ring, Gore Verbinski's American remake. Now there's The Hole, in which Wash West gives the first two films their just desserts. This lewd, hilarious send-up is especially satisfying if you saw one or both of the original films, and were annoyed by the implication that pro-censorship moral bluenoses are right: video kills.

In The Ring and its Japanese antecedent, a mysterious videocassette circulates among people who, after they've watched the weird, enigmatic black-and-white footage, receive phone calls telling them they're going to die in seven days-- and who then, after a week, receive calls cuing their deaths. In The Hole, men who watch the tape get calls from an entity who tells them, "In seven days, you will become gay." Then, a week later, the phone rings again and they're told, "You're gay." Tape victim Josh Hammer expresses his newly acquired gayness by dressing more stylishly, haunting boutiques that sell rainbow tchotchkes, and singing, "I should have known something was up/The day I trimmed my pubic hair,/The day I started lifting weights/In my designer underwear...."

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Tag Eriksson, a sober, brown-haired Swede whose nationality becomes a running joke, brings exquisite physical presence and deadpan comic flair to the role of a reporter who tracks down the fatal video, watches it, and begins to realize, before receiving the final phone call, that the homosexuality he's always repressed is now bubbling to the surface. West's talent for blending sex with humor has never been sharper; the video that makes you gay is inspired surrealist lunacy. The cast is top-notch. Because the models, most of whom can act, play three-dimensional characters, the sex scenes rock-- especially the ultimate encounter between Eriksson and Hammer. In The Hole, the phantom video helps men relax into their sexual identities. That is, it accomplishes just what good gay porn has the power to do.