Hide and Seek (2005)

Highly Overrated But Still Good

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Hide and Seek (2005): Dir: John Polson / Cast: Robert De Niro, Dakota Fanning, Elisabeth Shue, Famke Janssen, Amy Irving: Standard thriller about personality defects. Little Dakota Fanning witnesses her mother's death so her father moves them into a big country house but soon she begins relating to an imaginary friend named Charlie, which disturbs her father when incidents occur. Typical premise is pure formula until reaching the standard violent climax. Director John Polson does well with the plot twists but fails to entertain a screenplay worth them. He is backed with a cast worthy of better material than this. Robert De Niro struggles in helping his daughter dealing with mental and emotional issues. Fanning fares mutual with her blank flat emotion. We understand her trauma plus she is responsible for the few interesting twists. Elisabeth Shue appears as potential romance only. Famke Janssen plays a therapist concern for Fanning. The joke here is that Janssen will eventually have to take on the role of Wonder Woman. Amy Irving is refreshing to see in a key role but more of her would have been nice. She is responsible for a plot turn of sorts whether it matters. The theme of personality defects is hardly the point here. It is a typical dull thriller with good actors set against material that earns them little or no recognition. The screenwriter should hide and seek a better screenplay. Score: 2 ½ / 10

While this isn't one of De Niro's best movies, it's definitely not his worst either. I've seen reviews saying that Hide & Seek was the "lowest point of De Niro's career" and "De Niro done OK with a terrible script". This is, on both counts, absolute rubbish, because De Niro, along with Dakota Fanning, do a good job with a decent story. Hide & Seek is not a supernatural type of movie either, so if you are expecting a movie of that genre then you'll be sorely disappointed. It's a psychological thriller, and a pretty decent one at that, even if the 1st hour is a bit slow, but thankfully the last 30 minutes or so makes up for it.The story is about a widowed father, David Callaway (De Niro), and his daughter, Emily (Fanning), who move to a secluded house in a small town after the death of David's wife. Emily is understandably withdrawn after her mother's death, and in time she starts spending time with an imaginary friend called Charlie. However, David becomes more concerned for his daughter when she starts blaming horrible incidents that are happening around the house on Charlie. Soon David learns that Charlie may not just be a figment of Emily's imagination after all, and he has to try and find away of figuring out the mystery.Like I said earlier, the story is a pretty decent one and is not anywhere near as bad as people make it out to be. There is a good amount of tension and suspense throughout...especially in the last 30 minutes where everything starts coming to a head, along with a pretty good twist to boot, which, when you watch it, is actually quite an ironic twist considering.Whether you're a fan of De Niro, good psychological thrillers, or both, Hide & Seek is a very decent film and is definitely worth watching.

I'm not a particular fan of horror films, but this one starred Robert De Niro so I thought I'd give it a go. This is horror, mixed with suspense.The minute I saw that these people had a cat I thought this was going to be one cliché after another.The story is, an unhappy woman (Amy Irving) kills herself, leaving behind her husband and her beloved daughter Emily (Dakota Fanning). The father David is a psychologist and decides the best thing to do is to move upstate to a quieter setting with no reminders of their past lives.Emily is sullen and quiet and exhibits disturbing traits: an imaginary friend, not so disturbing in itself, but this friend is destructive, leaving some mean lipstick messages on the walls. Emily mangles a visitor's doll, openly resents a new friend of David's (Elizabeth Shue), destroys one of her own beloved dolls, and horrible drawings begin to appear. David half-believes Charlie exists and becomes suspicious of the next door neighbor, for one.What saved this film from being a run of the mill horror film was the ending, which was actually pretty good. The DVD I had also showed some of the alternate endings. The theatrical one for me is the best, though I think they're all making the same point.

I'm not going to go defending this film and say its a great movie or anything like that, because it definitely has many faults, but I found it entertaining enough to like it. Sure the "twist" wasn't executed very well, the end wasn't very good, nor was it an original idea, but the first half of the movie was done well, the acting was better than most, and the atmosphere/score managed to be somewhat creepy. No film is perfect, so despite its flaws, it kept me interested and watching until the end. It is about psychologist and his daughter moving into the country to start a new life after the suicide of his wife, however it seems his daughter creates a disturbing new imaginary friend to cope with her loss. Though it turns out her new friend Charlie may actually be real. It's good to watch when you're in the mood for a thriller type movie. Nothing groundbreaking here, and doesn't require a lot of thought, but a fun watch none the less.