Hideaway

source: Hideaway

Yes, Jurassic Park used computer generated images very well. However, they had a big budget and were able to make those dinosaurs look very realistic. This one ended up making very bad images of hell and of weird crap that looked as if it were not there. Jeff Goldblum was in both, coincidence? Yes, but still he was in one of the best examples of early computer images and one of the worst. What makes it more terrible is that a lot of horror movies began doing it, and to this day the monsters in these movies still look like they are not there. So the story in this one has two guys dying and being revived by similar means. One a family guy with a daughter, the other guy...well lets just say he is not so good. The guy who is not so good has a secret about his death, he is also a killer. The other guy (Goldblum) seems to have a link to this killer because of the way they were both revived. Near the end the killer targets the teen daughter and the father must try to pry her from this seemingly evil guy's clutches. Just did not really work for me, and apparently not to Dean Koontz either as I hear he did not like this movie at all. It has a somewhat good cast for a horror movie as along with Goldblum you have Alicia Silverstone and Alfred Molino, but one just can not get the lame effects out of one's head.

Not long after losing one of his two daughters in a car accident, family man and antique store owner Jeff Goldblum suffers his own car trauma and literally dies momentarily; a doctor brings him back to life, but it seems Goldblum has brought good and evil powers back with him from the other side: he is now telepathically entwined with a psychopath who hunts young women. Based on a Dean Koontz novel, this low-grade thriller has one of the laziest screenplays I've ever come across. Writers Andrew Kevin Walker and Neal Jimenez don't seem to have a shred of verisimilitude when it comes to writing dialogue for their equally unreal characters--nobody behaves the way regular people would. Christine Lahti is Goldblum's ineffective wife, Alfred Molina is Goldblum's ineffective doctor, Kenneth Welsh is an ineffective detective. They're all walking contrivances in this half-cocked adaptation, which allegedly embarrassed best-selling author Koontz (if it didn't, it should have). Just back from the hospital, Goldblum begins having nightmares that look like bits and pieces of a heavy metal video; the viewer is cued up for the obligatory waking-up-with-a-jolt-from-a-nightmare close-up (and the movie doesn't disappoint). Turns out there's a killer in town (Jeremy Sisto) who gets around from place to place with effortless, alarming accuracy; when he's not hanging out at a sleazy motel--which isn't even listed with information--he's holed up at a derelict amusement park (seems he conveniently has the place all to himself). Of course, nobody takes note that Sisto's latest victim looks like Goldblum's other daughter (Alicia Silverstone, who does nothing but whine), nor does wife Lahti take into account that just maybe her husband knows what he's talking about when he says their kid is in danger. The movie makes absolutely no sense from a logical stand-point, though all of this is rendered inconsequential once Jeff and Christine arrive for a showdown with Sisto near the park's Big Slide ride. The results of this stillborn finale are so shameful, one can only hope Goldblum and company were well-paid for not looking outraged. NO STARS from ****

This is a good rendering from the novel, which was trash to begin with. How Koontz, the literary equivalent of a bad full moon movie, could reach for stardom is still a mystery to me. On this one, we are always 30 minutes ahead of the characters in terms of what is going on. The on ly fun part is to see that, as Koontz in his novel rumbles on and on saying that young people don't know what music is and REAL music comes out of the sixties, the soundtrack is made on the best of industrial music ! Apart from that, don't

I just watched this on video. Looking at the video box, I remembered looking at the video box before, but I didn't remember seeing it before. I remember seeing it before now, though. Not a good sign. I can honestly, then, say this movie is forgettable. It starts with a young man in a house, with two women who appear to be praying silently. He goes up into a small room in which he has a lot of candles lit, newspaper clippings, and things written on the wall in red. He impales himself on a knife. A man runs into the house, and finds his wife and daughter are not praying, they're dead and posed, and he then finds his dead son. In a CGI scene, the dead son's soul or whatever (his translucent face, and a vague indication of his body) is traveling through colorful tunnels. It's pretty laughably bad. From that happy family, we go to Jeff Goldblum and his wife Christine Lahti on vacation with their daughter, Alicia Silverstone. They're corny, and their daughter finds them annoying. They get into a car accident on the way home, and Goldblum drowns or nearly drowns. He goes through the same sort of tunnels, but he also sees his other daughter who had died sometime in the past calling to him. It's pretty laughable too. Alfred Molina brings Goldblum back to life, but Goldblum starts having visions of himself killing young women. He also finds that when he injures himself, the injuries heal up almost instantly (that was never explained). Goldblum worries for the safety of his daughter, who the killer takes an interest in. In the end, there's a big CGI battle between good and evil. It's pretty corny too, and it's not just a matter of the now-dated special effects.

What a waste of time! You should know it right from the beginning when the film starts out with a cheesy special effects feast taking the viewer, literally, to hell. What follows is an uninspired tale of a father (Goldblum) who dies in a car crash, is brought back to life and from now on suffers from visions of young girls being killed. It soon turns out that the killer, whose murders he can see, is looking for his daughter (Silverstone). What could have been an entertaining B-movie suffers from a weak script (the story is boring every minute) and from uninspired actors. Christine Lahti remains pale as the worrying mother and wife, Alicia Silverstone´s dialogue consists to 50% in the word "Daddy!" (she isn´t even as cute as usual in this movie) and the absolute low is Jeremy Sisto as the bad guy whose acting is, to put it politely, wooden and unconvincing. Only Goldblum´s solid performance, the way he portrays the change from a calm but worrying family father to a hysterical and totally upset family father may keep the viewer interested in how things will turn out. The end is meant to be a gigantic battle between heaven and hell, good and evil and is one of the most ridiculous film climaxes I have EVER seen. It includes Goldblum´s second daughter, who died in a car crash before the film´s story sets in, as an angel. This ending was obviously meant to be a big fireworks of special effect, but it only disappoints a viewer, both technically and aesthetically. It is no wonder director Leonard turned to filming Sigfried & Roy shows a couple of years later.

***Spoilers may be contained within*** According to this movie's "trivia" section, the book's author, Dean R Koontz, was sorely disappointed in the movie adaptation and asked that his name be removed. He had every right to be peeved. I saw this in theatres when it was released and was soundly disappointed, too. The previews seemed kind of interesting but I have to admit I'm a Christine Lahti fan, even though her role in this is strictly "the wife". The story is that of a man, played by Jeff Goldblum, who, following a near-death experience, finds he is psychically linked with a serial killer, played by Jeremy Sisto, who decides to go after Goldblum's daughter (Alicia Silverstone). A cat-and-mouse thriller with sci-fi overtones. I've never read the Koontz book on which this is based. Goodness knows it can't be any worse. As lead, Goldblum is OK, I guess, though he's given this basic performance before. Lahti, unfortunately, is wasted in a part that could be played by just about ANY actress; it's a step up from "and how was YOUR day, dear?" but not much. Silverstone, charming in "Clueless", here is little more than an irritant, nearly making one rather root for the killer, but she can often be irritating in films, so I can't say if it's the fault of the part as written or the actress. As said villain, Jeremy Sisto has obviously watched every other psycho-on-the-loose movie and decided to "juice it up" a bit: he rolls his eyes, leers, laughs "maniacally", tries to seem intimidating by staring through lowered eyes. Every trick in the book is trotted out in his performance and for naught: he's about as terrifying as a computer geek. Sisto can, in other performances, be hammy, and he's no less so here: one nearly expects to see him studded with cloves and pineapple slices. Oh, it's not TOTALLY his fault, since the pedestrian script practically BEGS for overacting; I suppose if he DIDN'T chew the scenery, it might actually be less entertaining than it already IS. Beyond its psychic-link tricks, the film, in its less-than-chilling climax, throws in, seemingly out of nowhere, the twist that this is almost literally a battle between (of course) good and evil. This is revealed with a scene when Goldblum and Sisto are finally staring one another down, and a shot of red flames are visible in Sisto's eye; suddenly, in response, we see a flash of white-blue light in Goldblum's eye. A moment later, flames shoot and rise from Sisto's body, forming a fireball above him; blue-white rays of light pour forth from a kneeling Goldblum, forming a vaguely female form above him. The combination of film-school "special" effects (if they look cheesy on the SMALL screen, you can't IMAGINE how bad they were in the theatre!), this last-minute twist, and the inability to stretch one's suspension of disbelief any longer, is fatal. I heard several voices in the audience yell out, in unison, "Oh, COME ON!" From some of the reviews listed here, this movie has a fair number of supporters. I can only wonder just what version of this movie they saw.

Hideaway, starring Jeff Goldblum and Christine Lahti, was incredible. The show re-defined the classic battle between good and evil, by literally using the forces of heaven and hell to fight a battle in one scene. Hideaway is a very compelling thriller about a man who died and then was brought back to life... and brings something back. The actors take their roles very seriously and play the parts to perfection. Everything about the movie keeps you on the edge of your seat. It's the perfect movie to watch on a dark and stormy night... with a big bowl of popcorn and a couple of friends. I give it ten stars.

Where to begin...(possible spoilers, I guess) Words cannot properly describe my utter disgust at this movie. It is understandable that some things must be sacrificed to translate a full novel into 1 1/2- 2 hours of script. However, some choices were made here that needn't have been made, and the dark, beautiful, horrifying, gripping, frightening, and satisfying work that was the novel is destroyed. The Dean Koontz novel raped and pillaged by this film is *terrifying*. I read it as a young adult and had nightmares. I constantly looked over my shoulder as I walked down the street alone. The film was only visually scary. It lacked altogether the gripping terror. We don't get fully into Vassago's head, so why be afraid of him? We never see the depth of the evil created by Koontz. This is a man who truly believes he's been to hell, and back. He believes he is a prince of hell. Who is he in the movie? Some goth-looking teenager who gets off on killing people. I think that's been covered in enough movies already, thank you very much. Changing the character of Regina was another mortal wound. As other IMDB authors have pointed out, in the novel, Regina is a physically crippled, yet extremely precocious young girl who is *adopted* by Lindsey and Hatch. Her journey to learn to bond with and trust them is touching and essential. They giver her a home, she gives them comfort for the loss of their biological child. It is her deep inner beauty that is supposed to draw Vassago to her and to make him want to sacrifice her to Lucifer. In the film? Regina is a hot blond teenager. How shallow and insulting to us viewers. Jeff Goldblum is vastly miscast as Hatch Harrison. His bumbling-yet-intellectually-arrogant manner simply doesn't fit here. Dean Koontz's novel is woven throughout with the threads of good and evil, contrasting and preparing to battle. We are shown why the Harrisons are the "good guys." We are given a window into their hearts and minds. We *like* them. We are endeared to them. As far as I'm concerned, the only reason to root for them in the movie is, well, they're the ones who *aren't* killing people. The movie lacks this good/evil element throughout...then, suddenly, it magically appears at the end! What began as the fight of Goth Killer Boy vs. Witless Blond and her Stupid Parents instantly and inexplicably transforms into a mighty (and cheesy...) struggle between heaven and hell. But, by then, it's just too late to change the movie into something it's not: deep. 1 out of 10, because with this source material, they should be ashamed of themselves.

It's true, Hideaway was absolutely slaughtered on release and is still systematically torn apart in the listings every time it's on TV, but - hey! - it's not that bad. Jeff Goldblum is always, er, 'interesting' to watch, and the same goes for Brett Leonard films (try as he might to cripple them with whatever bottom-of-the-barrel SFX company he keeps hiring - the effects here are practically carbon copies of those in The Lawnmower Man, and seeing as they're supposed to represent ethereal spiritual journeys rather than clunky virtual reality environments, it doesn't exactly work wonders). So yeah, for what it was, I enjoyed it. But of course I haven't read the book, so I don't have any outraged fanboy zeal to contend with...