Reviewed by Justin Bateman
Stars Alex McQueen & Phil Campbell | Written by Tim Whitnall
UK certification 15 | UK RRP £12.99 | DVD Region 2 | Runtime 80 minutes | Directed by Marek Losey
If the idea of watching a film about a man sitting in wooden hut waiting to spot a rare bird doesn’t exactly fit in with your idea of a interesting watch then you need to pack away your preconceptions and open your mind. For Marek Losey’s low-budget British drama is a splendid slow-burning drama.
Roy Tunt (McQueen) is a keen ornithologist and is desperate to see the sociable plover, an occasional visitor from Asia. He goes to a hide on the Suffolk mudflats, arranges his birdspotting equipment with obsessive-compulsive precision and settles down. Without warning, a stranger calling himself Dave (Campbell) enters the hide. He’s not exactly threatening but neither does he show any intention of leaving. Roy decides to play it cool and before long is sharing his spicy chicken paste sandwiches with the mysterious young man.
Based on a stage play, this two-hander is necessarily talky but such are the excellent performances, especially from McQueen as the uptight Tunt that this is consistently intriguing. With little in the way of background information to go on aside from what the characters reveal through conversation, it’s impossible to know where the story is headed. If there is any flaw at all with The Hide it’s that the truth of the situation isn’t revealed earlier, something which would surely have increased the tension of the film.
As you’d hope and expect from an adapted play, the dialogue crackles and together with the drably dramatic vistas, claustrophobic setting of the hide and Debbie Wiseman’s melancholy score, all adds up to make this a wholly atmospheric piece. The Hide is well worth checking out although whether it will make you want to take up birdwatching is another matter entirely.
EXTRAS ** Trailer, Making of The Hide, deleted scenes, and YouTube virals.