The Hide

Roy, a somewhat retentive middle-aged loser, hunkers down in the eponymous hide --a birdwatching shed on the marshes -- apparently hoping to spot the one rare bird that has eluded him so far. Into his little haven comes lurching Dave, a towering, laconic figure with a secret. The two men warily circle each other as their respective pasts slowly unspool.

This is a wonderfully low-key little film with a wonderfully simple set-up that slowly but surely ratchets up the suspense as it goes along. What powers it so beautifully is the acting, which is just stunning. Phil Campbell, new to me, at first exudes weary menace which gradually gives way to a greater sadness, and Alex MacQueen, as Roy, deserves awards to be showered upon him for the performance he pulls off here. Better known for playing stuffy and/or supercilious characters on TV, here he plays Roy with a dweebishness and deadpan humour but keeps a deeper vein of underlying tension bubbling under before it erupts entirely. He manages to be both irritating, vulnerable, clueless, tragic and frightening all at the same time, and delivers some real laugh-out-loud moments amid the suspense.

Unfortunately, when the truth comes to the surface, the film begins to lose its power: The motives, once revealed, are outlandish and unconvincing and the film subsequently slips into the melodramatic. But, even then, the acting from both of them is never less than top-notch, the chemistry between them lights up the screen, and the finale, deftly delivered, stops the heart.

I am as keen a birdwatcher as I am a cinema-goer, but the paucity of films about birdwatching means that it is difficult to combine the two hobbies. The film version of Evelyn Waugh's "Decline and Fall" was released as "Decline and Fall of a Birdwatcher", presumably to avoid any confusion with Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", and many years ago, in the far-off days when British television stations still showed obscure foreign films and Estonia was still part of the Soviet Union, I came across a film from that country called "The Birdwatcher". Apart from that, however, there is not much.

"The Hide" is the latest addition to the slender corpus of birdwatching films. It is, ostensibly, set in a hide on a bird reserve on the Suffolk coast (an area I know well), although the exterior scenes were actually shot on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent (an area I know even better and where I often go on my own birdwatching expeditions).

Roy Tunt, a keen birdwatcher, has travelled to the reserve because of reports that a Sociable Plover has been seen in the area. Roy is a "twitcher" a word which needs some explanation. Among laymen, this expression is often simply used as a colloquial equivalent of "birdwatcher", but among the birdwatching fraternity itself a "twitcher" is someone who will travel long distances in order to see rare birds which can then be ticked off a list. Roy is hoping to see the Sociable Plover because, should he succeed, he will then have seen "all 568 birds on the British List".

There are, in fact, currently 583 species on the official British List, and it would not be possible for any individual to see them all, if only because one of those species, the Great Auk, has been extinct since the 1840s. A number of other species have not been seen in Britain for many years, and according to the twitcher's code of ethics one may only tick a bird off the British list if one actually sees it in Britain rather than abroad. For the purposes of the film, however, we have to accept that Roy is only one tick away from completing the list.

Roy is joined in the hide by Dave John, the only other character in the film. The two men are very different. Roy is middle aged, meticulous, seemingly mild-mannered, although he has his eccentricities; he has brought with him a photograph of his wife which he sets up on the bench in front of him. Dave is somewhat younger, scruffily dressed and rough-looking. It is clear that he has no knowledge of, or interest in, birds, which makes us wonder what he is doing wandering on an isolated bird reserve in bad weather. Although he never directly threatens Roy, there is something aggressive about his manner. News comes in on Roy's radio of a police manhunt in the area, and we begin to suspect that Dave may be the man they are looking for.

As the film progresses, however, we begin to learn more about the men as they converse together, and Roy shares his sandwiches and tea. Dave starts to seem more friendly and less threatening, whereas we find that Roy is gradually starting to seem more mysterious and sinister. The woman in the photograph, we learn, is not his wife, but his ex-wife. Could it be Roy who is hiding a guilty secret? The two roles were well played by Alex MacQueen and Phil Campbell, and the dialogue was often sharp, funny and to the point. I would, however, have two criticisms of the film. One would be about the characterisation of Roy. Certainly, birdwatchers are a fairly easy group to make fun of, but Roy bears little resemblance to any birdwatcher I have ever met. With his round face, his thick spectacles, his old-fashioned sleeveless pullover and his grammatical pedantry he seems more like a character from some 1960s satire show, the stereotypical boring, conventional, petit-bourgeois suburbanite who probably lives in a bungalow called "Dunroamin". To complete this picture Roy's hobby, apart from birdwatching, is making a collection of garden gnomes.

My other criticism is that the film is too long. This may seem a strange criticism to make of a film which is already considerably shorter than most recent feature films. It seemed to me, however, that this was a story which would have worked better as a television play of around an hour in length, the sort of thing that the BBC used to do in the days of "Play for Today" in the seventies and eighties. Today, unfortunately, one-off plays have fallen out of favour television executives, who prefer to spend drama budgets on sit-coms, soap operas, costume dramas and long-running serials which eventually become virtually indistinguishable from soaps, so stories like this have to be made as films rather than plays. 6/10

Saw this film on Filmfour one night and thought it was so good. It's got a really nice set up - a middle aged man with borderline OCD, who is waiting to see the last bird on his list. He is articulate and polite. He is joined by a rough, inner city northern guy, who looks a little banged up and dangerous. From here on is a tense game of back and forth with the power shifting between the two men as more layers are peeled away and they learn more about each other. The two actors command attention and are very engaging throughout. Marek Losey has delivered a tight, well paced and taught thriller which uses it's claustrophobic environment well to create a nervous watch.

I was not sure what to expect but I really enjoyed it, and it kept my attention throughout, despite the late hour. The writing was excellent, both actors were terrific and the film was beautifully shot. The film is full of tension without descending into cheap shocks.

I would say it is less 'Pinteresque' (as one reviewer said) than Sam Shepherdesque... as you carry on thinking about the characters and the things you learn about them long after the film is over.

The scenes of the lonely marshland and the distant birds are very atmospheric, too.

I hope it gets the success it deserves! It's great to see a British film, and I presume a low-budget one, with such promise.

I caught this on Film 4 one night, never heard of it before but i gotta admit i was pleasantly surprised by what i had just watched. I'm not gonna spoil the film for anyone with an in-depth review but it was amazing how much enjoyment you could get from watching 2 men talking about powertools and birdwatching whilst shacked up in a shed on the marshes. There is creepy tension that builds between the 2 men over the running of the film which might get a little predictable towards the end for some but there is no denying the appeal of both characters,especially Roy Tunt(a sort of twisted Alan Partrige). The movie only goes to show that you don't need a big cast or budget to make a riveting story as long as you've got good actors and a tight script.