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HIDE AND SEEK Send This Review to a Friend
It’s sad to see an actor of Robert De Niro’s achievements reduced to the thoroughly unbelievable role he plays in “Hide and Seek,” an exercise in creepy suspense with a twist that has no grounding either in the way the film is set up or in making any sense in the course the film eventually takes. I suppose there are undemanding audiences who will seek out this sort of horror nonsense in contrast to those who will want to hide from it. Director John Polson turns up the heat to wring the maximum jolts from the screenplay written by Ari Schlossberg.
At the outset we learn of marital problems between David Callaway, a psychologist, and his wife Alison (Amy Irving), who likes to play little hide and seek games with her nine-year-old daughter Emily (Dakota Fanning), whom she dearly loves. Allison’s sudden grisly death, which we see David discovering while Emily stands in the doorway looking on, sends Emily into a trauma. Sullen and uncommunicative, a mood captured by Fanning’s haunting eyes, Emily is getting treatment from Katherine (Famke Janssen), a child psychologist and colleague of David. But David, who has recurrent nightmares and always awakes at the same hour, decides it would be best for a new start by getting a house in the country and taking Emily there, where she can recover. It is against Katherine’s advice.
Soon Emily is talking about a new imaginary friend named Charlie and acting out a nasty streak but attributing her actions to Charlie, who she says, dislikes David and Elizabeth (Elisabeth Shue), who has been divorced and becomes friendly with David and tries to also befriend Emily. Other characters include neighbors who have lost a child, a local sheriff and a real estate broker. You are on your own now. Even with a film as contrived as this one, it is not considered fair to reveal more than one must. A 20th Century Fox release.
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