Hide and Seek (2005)
Hide and Seek intrigues at first. During the second half, it'll frustrate you. By the end, you're unsure whether to laugh or take your fury out on the screen.
After discovering the body of his wife (Amy Irving) in a bathtub with her wrists slashed, Dr. David Callaway (Robert De Niro) decides to move to Upstate New York with his daughter (Dakota Fanning). Things begin to take a strange turn when Emily announces to her father that she's made a new friend. "Charlie" is invisible - of course- and wants to cause David pain.
This film cheats. It plays with its cards close to its chest. You never know if Charlie's real, some kind of demonic spirit, if the little girl's going crazy, or something else. You'll never figure it out because Hide and Seek lies to you. The abundance of clues that mean nothing in the end, along with 4 alternate endings on the DVD makes this picture reek of the dreaded last-minute-rewrite. Characters act illogically in order to make them appear creepy and throw off the audience. Does anyone ever come to deliver keys to a house in the middle of the night? Do realtors normal omit the fact that there are secret passageways in a house, or murders that were committed there on a full moon, on a Friday the 13th exactly 100 years ago? They don’t, unless they're shady or the movie wants you to think so. I’m certain that somewhere, there are even more deleted scenes and alternate endings for Hide and Seek that show a multitude of the dead clues paying off into all kinds of wacky endings. This film had no idea where it wanted to go while they were shooting.
Forget the ending. Forget the aggravating clues throughout. How's the rest of the movie? not that it matters, but the performances are good. Really good in fact. Robert De Niro is a talented actor, even when he’s been handed awful material. Dakota Fanning's the one who impresses, however. Child actors often put their experience points in their “cuteness” skill and that only goes so far. Fanning's not like that. She keeps up with the veteran. Famke Jansen plays the role of a family friend. She’s pretty good too. Here and there, you'll find some effective moments of tension, although they’re the same kind you’ve seen in every single creepy kid movie.
What works in Hide and Seek makes you realize the degree to which the actions are manufactured. There’s a big event that marks the “ok, now things are getting out of hand” point of the film... and David hardly reacts. He doesn’t call the police, he leaves his daughter alone to be attacked or kidnapped or whatever over and over, he doesn’t listen to what she’s got to say when she is explicitly telling him to do certain things. He just does whatever the plot demands to do to stretch this ordeal out. The daughter's just as bad. Damn these horror movie kids, can’t they just talk plainly instead of talking through clues?
Thinking about what this movie could've been, and theorizing what exactly was going on in the heads of the people responsible for putting Hide and Seek together is much more rewarding than the movie itself. The performances are convincing, but that’s all you’ve got to look forward to if you foolishly decide to play Hide and Seek on DVD. (Theatrical version on DVD, February 13, 2015)
