#Manhole is a familiar smelling single location thriller where a dude falls down a manhole and can’t get out. Seems like a remarkably narrow scenario… how hard is it to climb out of a manhole? Or follow the tunnels to another point of egress?

The movie has the answers and while I certainly had a suspicious face half the time, credit to them for filling in the potential plot holes. It now just comes down to whether “man in manhole can’t escape” is really enough premise to drive a 90+ minute movie. I’m unconvinced but maybe there’s just enough there for a very tepid recommendation.

My main curiosity going in was why would a movie about a dude trapped in a manhole have a hashtag in its title? But it made sense since he is the owner of a magical cellphone that works under ANY condition, allowing him to crowd source his own rescue on social media.

There’s too much downtime in between unlikely scenarios and even more unlikely plot twists. I guess it kind of works itself out in the end and bonus points for the hard-scrabble attempts at suspense and thrills.

It comes very close to a lower rating but I’ll give it a bit of a pass for utilizing crowd sourced puzzles in a way that’s believable. Put a bunch of internet sleuths on anything, they are bound to collectively stumble on the answer (and sometimes not). Pretty decent premise even with some doubtful elements and one miraculous cell phone.

Score: 75