When I read the premise of this film it sounded fantastic: a brooding thriller, set entirely within a birdwatching hide on a remote beach, where two strangers meet and struggle to hide their dark secrets. As I sat watching it, I realised something shocking: this film was completely, unwatchably awful. The entire blame can be laid on the script, which is so dull and lifeless that I was never "entertained" for a minute.
Past masters of the single-set thriller, like Hitchcock with ROPE, may have made a better job of directing this filmed play but I doubt even that. Whether there was supposed to be any build-up of tension and menace during these long, pointless conversations I don't know.
Then, in the last ten minutes, there's the kind of over-obvious twist you probably guessed within the first ten minutes, a highly silly reveal that makes little or no sense whatsoever and only serves to destroy what realism the film had to begin with. A bad ending to what is an extraordinarily poor film.
Past masters of the single-set thriller, like Hitchcock with ROPE, may have made a better job of directing this filmed play but I doubt even that. Whether there was supposed to be any build-up of tension and menace during these long, pointless conversations I don't know.
Then, in the last ten minutes, there's the kind of over-obvious twist you probably guessed within the first ten minutes, a highly silly reveal that makes little or no sense whatsoever and only serves to destroy what realism the film had to begin with. A bad ending to what is an extraordinarily poor film.