Hide and Seek

Hide and Seek-S0E0

The set up is kind of fun, then the center of the film gets a little boring, then secrets are revealed and you realize you've been lobotomized by stupidity. Elizabeth Shue's cleavage is the best supporting character in this otherwise teeth grindingly dumb movie. The movie is about as light an R as you can get. It tiptoed past the PG-13 with a little bit of blood, but I have to wonder if they wanted the PG-13 and were surprised by this rating. Here's a question: what is the tipping point in DeNiro's career that took his from greatness to these crap dwellings? Even Angel Heart is a masterpiece compared to most of the schlock we've been getting from Bobby during the last DeCade. To the real Robert De Niro: Come out come out wherever you are!

You know what I don't get? Why is it that creepy little boys or girls seem to always get away with anything? Look, when I see a creepy little kid, I will say that that kid is a creepy little bastard! I call it like I see it. I realize that most kids in the world are not disturbed, but some are, and should you ever come across one, then please save humanity and do all us humans a favor by making sure that said creepy little kid is locked away for life. I realize that creepy little kids have been a staple for horror films, but to suggest that they should never be thought of as criminals is insane. Hollywood loves to portray kids as angels. Like I said, most are, but I think Hollywood needs a reality check. This leads me to Hide and Seek, a movie that is mediocre even with powerful actors like DeNiro, Fanning and Shue. For some reason, Bobby makes more mediocre films nowadays then he does quality. I realize you have to pay the bills, but come on. DeNiro is one of the best actors ever, and his movie choices lately (Godsend, which is horrible)have sucked. DeNiro should have looked at the script and then decided to burn it after reading the first 3 pages. Either that or he should have demanded a love scene with Elisabeth Shue for extra compensation. Fanning parents saw the $$$$ there little girl would earn, and signed her up real quick. Well, that is my theory, cause she is way better than this garbage. Fanning plays the "creepy little kid", and DeNiro plays her psychiatrist dad. Mom kills herself in the beginning of the movie, or at least that is what it looks like. Darling daughter becomes depressed and creepy, and daddy decides to move from the city to the country for a new start. Turns out the move is a bad idea, cause (excluding Shue's character) all the residents of this small town that we meet are creepy too. And why is it that small town folk are always creepy? Big cities have there fair share of freaks as well, but for some reason, this movie (along with many others) wants you to believe that small town folks are crazy as hell. Anyways, this movie goes from okay to flat out ridiculous in no time at all, and once the big "surprise" comes at the climax of the film, you feel as if you have seen this movie somewhere before. That is due to the fact that Hide and Seek turns into a rehash of many other films. Sad thing is the fact that Hide and Seek wants to be different........but it isn't. I'll give Fanning credit. She does play her role well, and it was because of her that I watched this whole thing. This is a dark role for her, and she seems to eat it up. She does have a bright future ahead of her, but she needs to avoid crap like this.

I was absolutely on the edge of my seat the entire time. The acting was terrific and the mood and pace was unlike any thriller I have seen before. I really didn't know how it was going to play out and it almost didn't matter who 'Charlie' even was. I was just enjoying the setup. De Niro and Fanning are a solid match and did a wonderfully job conveying the desperate but paralyzed father and the tormented frightened child. Even though we've seen various parts of this before, the way it was done was fresh and as scary as hell!! I thought "Hide and Seek" was great fun and a pleasant surprise and I hope it brings De Niro back to doing what we love him to do - Drama! Check it out!

Hide and Seek is a solid thriller. It is well-acted and well-photographed. It has been some time since I wanted to say anything nice about Robert DeNiro. His lowlifes and tough guys and neanderthal gangsters were getting very stale. He was very good in this. I like the way he relates to his troubled daughter. Dakota was excellent as was the underemployed Famke Jansen. Unlike the Shyamalan efforts,which have never failed to bore me to distraction, this movie is actually entertaining. The ending of Signs had me shaking the seat in front of me and howling like George C.Scott in Hardcore. The good reviews that followed it made me doubt the integrity of professional critics. Take it from someone who has no axes to grind, who is not connected to the movie industry in any way,no behinds to kiss, no under the table pay offs expected, Hide and Seek is better than most of the movies that I saw last year. See it!

I wasn't impressed with 'Hide and Seek.' If you've seen Secret Window or any of the recent horror=thrillers with endings of an identical twist, you'll understand how tired and utterly formulaic this has become. Hide and Seek lacks imagination anyways because the viewer is asked to be confounded by a series of disconnected scare tactics such as things jumping of closets, the last minute awareness of the culprit before the death of an unsuspecting victim, and above all, modern horror-thriller filmmakers determined to creep you out with some weirdo kid. All the while, however, the story is very thin: that of a father and his young daughter coping with the gruesome death of the wife/mother who supposedly slit her wrists in the bathtub where she bled to death. However, we are led to believe that in fact, her death was no accident. And the weird little girl and her mysterious, elusive friend "Charlie," seem to be behind the whole thing as they taunt the father who just seems to want to get on with things. Something like 'The Omen,' if you will. But, it doesn't end that way, of course. Instead, a cast of pretty good actors star in a film of cheap tricks and an even cheaper ending (including the infamous last scene where you think that all is well until there is some last minute evidence that in fact, the evil will continue unabated). Formula one hundred percent. If you've seen films like 'Secret Window' or 'Taking Lives' or other similar pseudo-mind benders (sorry, other titles don't come to mind at the moment), then you're in for nothing new if you watch 'Hide and Seek.' In any event, De Niro didn't over act and Dakota Fanning did a fine job creeping me out.

As a psychological thriller, or a horror film, "Hide and Seek" doesn't break new ground. In fact, once it's over, the viewer feels somehow manipulated by what we have just witnessed. There are, supposedly, four different alternative endings for the movie, but unfortunately, the one being shown, doesn't add anything to what we have already seen. Although the film has some interesting moments, director John Polson has gone for the Grand Guignol effect. Ari Schlosberg's screen play gives us hints about what to expect, yet, when we realize the mystery at the center of the story, we keep scratching our heads. Suffice it to say, this film doesn't add anything to Robert DeNiro's brilliant career. Mr. DeNiro's last choices in films puzzle us, as well as his fans because we know he is capable of doing much better. Yet, as shown with this film and "Meet the Parents", and its sequel, "Meet the Fockers", "Analize This", and "Analize That", the actor keeps us wondering about his choices. Dakota Fanning is a young actress who shows an uncanny sense of how to upstage Mr. DeNiro in most of their scenes together. As Emily, in this film, this girl shows an enormous range in what she is capable of doing. One can see Ms. Fanning growing to be another Jody Foster in later years. The rest of the cast is completely underused. Amy Irving is only seen in flashbacks, which is a shame since she is a valuable actress. Famke Janssen has a few key scenes. The same goes for Melissa Leo, Elisabeth Shue and Robert John Burke. The only consolation was it was shown on cable and we felt lucky not having spent the price of admission.

This horror/thriller/(maybe)supernatural movie is nothing really remarkable, or anything that you haven't seen before, but it's quite watchable. After the suicide of his wife, Robert de Niro's psychologist character withdraws to an isolated rural location as therapy for his traumatised daughter. Things start to get creepy when she develops an imaginary friend who has a decidedly vicious streak. I've been complaining for some years now that de Niro really needs to pay a bit more attention to the sort of parts he accepts: he's been in far too many stupid comedies. Here we finally see him in a dramatic role, and whereas he pulls it off professionally, it's not really an inspired performance, and you have to wonder where his next classic role is going to come from. That aside, 'Hide and Seek' is a suitably creepy and dark movie. Its major fault, at least as far as I was concerned, is that its crucial 'secret' was obvious by about half an hour from the end. I still held out hopes that I was wrong, but I think anyone who's seen enough films of this sort would work it out by a process of elimination, and besides, the movie blows its own cover completely a good 10 or 15 minutes from the end, which leaves you with a rather disappointing and predictable run home. The DVD includes four alternate endings, three of which the directors eventually decided were too 'dark', and that the audience deserved some kind of positive 'reward' after having sat through so much traumatic stuff. I disagree. At least two of the three 'dark alternate endings would have improved the film by giving it a sting in the tail. Good god, go through a mental list of great horror movies, and you won't find many that shy away from endings that are 'too dark'.

All's not well at the home of the Callaways. David (Robert De Niro) and Alison (Amy Irving) have obvious tension in their relationship. When it leads to suicide shortly after the film begins, David, a psychologist, packs up his young daughter Emily (Dakota Fanning) and heads from New York City to bucolic upstate New York to try to start over. Unfortunately, the suicide was just the start of their problems. It seems that something evil may have followed them into the woods. Hide and Seek is not your typical thriller. For much of its length, it is a much quieter, slower-paced drama, resting almost entirely on meaty, complex performances from two actors, one of whom--Fanning--was only 10 years old while making the film! It also is veers back and forth from thriller to horror territory (which have a notoriously gray border anyway) depending partially on one's interpretation of the film. The ending is marked by a clever twist that most viewers may not see coming, and which will pleasantly broach more questions than it answers long after you have seen the film. Those facts might turn some potential viewers off, but anyone able to slow down and appreciate fine acting housed in a dense, creepy environment will be rewarded. The film was a 10 out of 10 for me. Newcomer screenwriter Ari Schlossberg has said that he grew up in the city, so just the idea of the woods, as well as children in general, frighten him. Those may be unusual sentiments, but director John Polson has translated them with remarkable ease into Hide and Seek. The country setting feels eerie from the moment David and Emily arrive, and Fanning's outstanding performance has her gradually changing from a cute kid to a scary little pseudo-Goth monster more slyly than native New Yorker slipping into the subway car before you to grab the last seat. Of course De Niro is good, too, but that goes without saying. Hide and Seek gives both performers a chance to show their range, but the biggest surprise is perhaps that Fanning can match De Niro step for step. The rest of the cast doesn't slouch, either, but they're not the focus. Their role is more to provide the necessary little nudges to justify our stars' next dazzling feats. While I cannot talk at length about various subtexts and interpretations without giving spoilers, they range from the purely psychological to the supernatural. It is worth noting before watching that little of what you see playing out on the screen may be actually happening, and there may be something more sinister at work that is never fully stated in the film. Schlossberg has said that among his many influences for this script were The Shining (1980), and in fact, that masterpiece is directly referenced a few times. Those are big shoes to try to fill. While the style and content of Hide and Seek are very different than The Shining--Hide and Seek is even more understated--that's also a slower-paced film that finds much of its effectiveness from its thick atmosphere and commendable performances, and fans of Kubrick's great horror film should find enough to enjoy here as well.

When I first saw the preview for Hide and Seek, i thought that it was just another creepy kid movie. but after going to see it with a clear mind, i was pleasantly surprised. The movie was well-crafted and suspenseful with incredible performances from the cast. Dakota Fanning played a scarred young girl who develops a dangerous "imaginary" friend named Charlie. Her father(Dinero) moves with her to a remote place out of the city for a new start after his wife's suicide. I loved the first hour of this movie. The characters showed true depth and the effects of what Fanning's character had seen were wonderfully shown. The neighbors were introduced and seemed very creepy. Okey, now to the second hour...Why? Why? The writers had so many ways to go, why did they do the second personality ending? For those who hadn't seen it, the Dad was Charlie. It's not even the lazy routine ending that bothered me, it's that they had so many other choices! one, the couple who lost their child. The father saw him speaking to his daughter. When he went over to their house, he talked to the neighbor's wife who broke down, saying that her husband did something bad. What was that about? Also, the neighbor who was returning a key at 3am who seemed very suspicious. With any of these endings, they could have scared audiences with the modern fear of kidnapping and child abduction. But no, they went with the alternate personality. This movie leaves the audience wanting their money back and wondering why they didn't see "Earnest goes to the Beach" instead. The writing is inconsistent, leaving loose ends with the neighbor's stories. I suggest watching the first hour and then leave or change the channel (if you're watching it on TV).