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Movie Review - Hide and Seek (2005)
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(What this rating means)
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| Director: |
John Polson |
| Starring: |
Robert De Niro, Dakota Fanning, Famke Janssen, Elisabeth Shue, and Melissa Leo |
| Rated: |
R (for frightening sequences and violence) |
| Length: |
101 minutes |
| Genre: |
Thriller |
| Tagline: |
Come out come out whatever you are |
| Studio: |
20th Century Fox |
| Website: |
Hide and Seek |
| Release: |
January 28, 2005 |
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PLOT
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After Emily Callaway's (Fanning) mother (Amy Irving) commits suicide, her father David (De Niro) decides they
need to move to the country and enjoy a change of scenery. Unfortunately, Emily continues to remain freaked
out and creates an imaginary friend named Charlie. Or is Charlie not really just a figment of Emily's
imagination?
Haunted by nightmares, David continually finds himself being awakened at exactly 2:06 AM (the time he found his
wife dead in the bath tub). He always heads to the bathroom and finds a message written in blood or something
even worse. Emily denies all culpability and blames it on Charlie. Exactly who is Charlie, and why is he
doing this? An unfortunately predictable movie that never lives up to its full potential ensues.
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JOHNNY'S TAKE
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NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! WHY? Why must movies do this to me? Man, this is so annoying.
Everything starts out great. Robert De Niro's wife kills herself. Ooooh, we're dealing with dark
subject matter! Dakota Fanning displays her fine acting ability and starts to act a little creepy.
All right, scary kids rule! De Niro decides they need to move to a house out in the middle of
nowhere. Woo-hoo, a creepy location! OK, I must admit that I'm not so sure that moving to a
spooky house located in a deserted place in the woods is really the best solution to help your
daughter get over her mother's horrific suicide, but hey, it makes for an unsettling atmosphere so
I'll roll with these dice.
What next, ah yes, the eerie next door neighbors who recently lost a child. We all know something
strange is going on there! Then Dakota notices a spooky looking entrance to the woods, along with
an even spookier looking cave. Shades of Pet Sematary anybody? This is gettin' good, folks.
And they just get better when Dakota comes back from the woods with an imaginary friend, Charlie.
Cue the tense music, throw in some strange and threatening comments that Dakota claims Charlie
told her, add De Niro's nightmares waking him up and leading him to several grisly scenes in the
bathroom (no, Taco Bell was NOT involved), and I'm hooked, baby! I was eagerly waiting to see
what would happen next. But then I started thinking...
Oh no. Please don't let my theory come to fruition.
Mr. Shade turned to me and said, "I hope [spoiler deleted] doesn't turn out to be [spoiler deleted]. That'd
be awful." Sigh. I replied, "Yep. I hope that's not the case, but I was thinking the same thing." Then
Stephanie turned to me and said, "I think I know." To which I replied, "I hope it's not [spoiler deleted]."
Stephanie confirmed that's exactly what she was thinking. We watched in dread.
Then the revelation came. I'm sad to report that all three of us nailed it.
And unfortunately, it's all downhill after that. I sighed, sat back in my seat, and proceeded to not
care anymore. And what's worse is that there was about 20 minutes left! It's like watching your
favorite sports team play its guts out for most of the game, but then they start getting blown out.
You know there's no chance of them making a comeback, but for some reason you continue to watch
anyway.
I just don't get it. The first 2/3rds of the movie is very effective and very well-done. Dakota and
De Niro are very good and very convincing in their roles. I've used "very" way more times than necessary
in any one review. But then the big "twist" is revealed, and it's pretty much the same thing I've seen
in at least three movies within the last year that have been as equally disappointing.
To make matters worse, we're treated to a series of inane and completely ineffective flashbacks that try to
show us what was going on the entire time. They don't make any sense because none of the pieces fit in the
puzzle that has been created. I don't mind being manipulated by a movie. The Sixth Sense did a great
job of convincing us that one thing was happening, but then completely turning everything around and showing
us what was really going on. The flashbacks actually worked within the context of everything we'd already
seen. Sadly, that ain't the case with ol' Hide and Seek.
Nope. The writers just decided to make up stuff at the end of the movie that contradicts everything we've
already seen just so they could try to explain their stupid plot twist. It's a cop-out, and my intelligence
doesn't appreciate it.
I think I figured out why the movie is called Hide and Seek. It looks like the writers decided
to hide about 2/3rds of the way through, and nobody bothered to seek out good writers to finish the
script. They should've just called the movie Thriller by Numbers because after the big revelation,
somebody just opened their copy of The Big Book of Thriller Clichés and started checking them off
the list. It's just so frustrating.
Come on, if you show up at a house and notice an empty police car outside with its lights flashing, you
might be alarmed, right? Well, what would you do if you then walked inside the house and saw a bloody shovel
lying in front of an open door that leads down to a dark, dingy basement? You'd walk up to the door, peer
into the darkness, and call out someone's name, right? OF COURSE NOT! So why are we expected to believe Famke
Janssen's character would be so stupid? Sigh.
Note to Hollywood: If you're gonna give us an effective set-up, then please LEARN HOW TO EFFECTIVELY END THE
MOVIE! For thrillers like this, the payoff is everything. I'm so sick of this disappointment.
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ODDS & ENDS
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- Elisabeth Shue plays a character named Elizabeth. I can't make fun of this too much since Josh Brolin's
character in Mimic was named Josh.
- Shue's cleavage has a bigger role in this movie than she does.
- Melissa Leo plays one of the creepy neighbors. About 8 of you will remember her as Emma in The Young
Riders.
- Johnny Betts never had an imaginary friend. However, he would talk to imaginary reporters in his front yard
after hitting a last second shot (on his own basketball goal) to win a championship.
- Stephanie thinks Dakota Fanning looks like her niece.
- Johnny thinks Famke Janssen is hot.
- I'm lazy today, so here we go: Dakota Fanning was in Tomcats with Travis Fine who was in The Young
Riders with Josh Brolin who was in Hollow Man with Kevin Bacon. Hey, at least I wasn't so lazy that
I made the direct connection from Melissa Leo to Brolin.
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MAMA'S APPROVAL
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There's not a whole lot for mama to disapprove of, especially for an R-rated movie. De Niro drops one f-bomb. The
violence is nowhere near as bad as I was expecting it to be. Sure, there's some blood, and we see some dead bodies,
but it's not much more graphic than what you can see on a typical episode of C.S.I. Animal lovers beware:
a dead cat is thrown into the proceedings.
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TRAILER COMPARISON
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The trailer does a good job of setting the tense, creepy tone that we feel throughout the first 2/3rds of the
movie. However, the trailer is a little misleading. I can't say anything else without spoiling it, but I was
expecting the story to take a different route than it did.
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THE GIST
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Hide and Seek is an effective thriller for about an hour. Unfortunately, when it comes time to give
us the big revelation, the movie becomes entirely predictable and clichéd. I suppose if you haven't seen
any Sixth Sense rip-offs within the past couple of years, then you might not see what's coming, but
that's highly suspect. Wait for the rental. Maybe there will be deleted scenes or an alternate ending that
will help the movie find some sort of redemption.
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