Synopsis:
A teenage girl (THORA BIRCH) staggers through the deserted corridors of an exclusive English boarding school. Battered and bloody, she can barely walk. She reaches a phone, calls the emergency...
A teenage girl (THORA BIRCH) staggers through the deserted corridors of an exclusive English boarding school. Battered and bloody, she can barely walk. She reaches a phone, calls the emergency services, screams and faints. When the police arrive, there's only one question on everyone's lips: what happened to her and her three school friends who went missing two weeks ago?
It's a question to which Dr. Philippa Horwood (EMBETH DAVIDTZ), the psychologist working with the police, is determined to find the answer. While the police begin the forensic examination of the underground bunker from which Liz has just escaped, Philippa embarks on a painful quest for the truth. Under her gentle counselling, Liz casts her mind back two weeks to when she was an innocent schoolgirl with a mad crush on Mike (DESMOND HARRINGTON), the son of an American rock star and the coolest guy on the planet. Not that he'd notice her, of course, with her mousy brown hair, unsophisticated clothes and uncool image. She would do anything to get his attention.
It's Martin (DANIEL BROCKLEBANK) who makes everything happen. Martin -- the school weirdo, an introverted computer whiz who is as in love with Liz as she's in love with Mike. Whatever Liz wants, Martin will get, no matter what the cost to him emotionally. And it so happens that he's arranged for Mike, Mike's best friend Geoff (LAURENCE FOX) and Frankie (KEIRA KNIGHTLEY), the queen of the girls' dorm, to escape the boring end-of-term geography field trip and spend three days hiding out in a secret underground bunker. He will arrange for Liz to join the party. FOr Liz, it's a dream come true -- three days with the coolest kids in school, handsome jock Geoff, beautiful Frankie and charming Mike, her soul mate, her Prince Charming, the man she's meant to be with.
But the plan soon goes horribly wrong. After three days of teenage fun in the bunker, the kids find that they are shut in. Is it an accident or has Martin deliberately imprisoned them? No amount of shouting or banging will raise the alarm since the bunker is deep in the woods.
Days pass as, trapped in their underground hideaway, they try to make sense of the situation. Liz reasons that Martin wants to kill off her infatuation with Mike by pushing them to the edge of darkness together. Convinced that he is listening in, they act out a scene in which Liz and Mike hurl insults at each other.
It works! The next morning, the bunker door is open and the four clamber up to freedom. Mike gathers Liz in his arms, bursting with pride and affection.
When Liz finishes her story, it's obvious to Philippa that the girl before her is deeply traumatized, unable to face up to the awful reality of her friends' deaths. The police, meanwhile, have arrested Martin. In the interrogation room, he's aloof and arrogant.
As he begins his version of events, a terrible truth begins to emerge, a truth that will expose the full horror of an obsessive love, a love that will stop at nothing to be fulfilled...
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