Lisa Gardener’s Hide is given the small screen adaptation in TNT’s Mystery Movie Night line up. In this TV movie Carla Gugino (Sin City) plays D.D. Warren, a Boston police detective who is brought in to lead an investigation when a group of boys stumble upon an underground layer full of mummified bodies. The bodies, all female, prove to be hard to pinpoint as to who the victims were and the only clue comes from an engraved necklace with the name Annabelle Granger on it. When it looks like the investigation has come to a stand still a woman shows up and admits that she is Annabelle Granger (Bridget Regan; Legend of the Seeker). From here the story unfolds deeper to reveal more crimes, more mysteries, a copy cat killer or possibly multiple killers. Can D.D. Warren solve the crime, protect the real Annabelle Granger, and keep her personal relationships in check?

This marks the third made for TV movie I’ve watched in TNT’s Mystery Movie Night. The first two films in the series were not to my liking, mainly because the acting in them was a bit atrocious and at least one of them failed miserably in delivering a coherent story. Hide has a significant boost in the acting category thanks to Carla Gugino, Kevin Alejandro (True Blood), and Mark-Paul Gosselaar (Franklin & Bash), all who flesh out their characters quite nicely and deliver their dialogue without even the slightest trace of cheese factor, even when the very little cheesy dialogue there is pops up. Story-wise Hide is pretty good. The end of the film is a little far fetched but made believable by the flow of the story and the acting.

The story incorporates a lot of different suspects into the fold and your never quite sure whose on the level or if, somehow, one of the cops on D.D.’s team is moonlighting as the killer. It also helps that the story isn’t simply consumed by the main arc but rather throws out a bizarre love triangle (or should I say rectangle) that adds depth to the characters themselves, and that aspect carries through at the core of the story all the way to the end. In any case you’ll never be bored and unlike the previous two Mystery films that will air on TNT this one won’t make you cringe in the acting department. Everything is seemingly in place to make this a real nail biter with characters you care about and a story that will probably shock you in the end.