Hide & Seek review

2005.02.18 — Entertainment | Movies | Movie Reviews | by Andrew Cole

Hide & Seek isn't the worst piece of schlock filmmaking I've ever seen. That claim goes to Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, a movie so gut-wrenchingly bad it wasn't even fun to chuckle at its horribleness. But Hide & Seek is the latest in a long line of schlocky retreads of the same theme: spooky kid, shocking twist, aren't we clever?

The spooky-kid-shocking-twist sub-genre began of course with The Sixth Sense, a masterful piece of filmmaking that taunts us with the truth and still keeps us guessing. Hide & Seek, on the other hand throws red herring after red herring at us in a desperate attempt to throw us off track. It doesn't work.

First off, the film features a psychologist. Any thriller that features a psychologist is trying too hard to scare you.

This is a corollary of my other rule: any movie that features a veterinarian or a kindergarten teacher is desperate to be liked.

Robert Deniro is David Callaway (a name apparently pulled from Hollywood's boring-character-name bin). Dakota Fanning is his daughter Emily. Deniro's oddball wife winds up in the tub with her wrists slashed, witnessed by the little girl, and he takes his daughter away to a huge, isolated country house where she can forget her trauma by staring at trees.

Fun Fact: "Emily" has been one of the top 3 most popular girl's name since 1995. Suck on that, Tiffany and Heather.

Little Emily is the palest, most drawn and vampiric kid since The Ring (or Stir of Echoes, or Signs, or The Sixth Sense, or whatever), but everyone thinks she's beautiful—and says so, including David's colleague (Famke Janssen), the local real estate guy, the sheriff, the young divorcee (Elizabeth Shue), and the creepy neighbors who recently lost a daughter of their own. Upsetting things start happening in the house, but Emily blames them on her new friend, "Charlie." Before long—well, after long, actually—it becomes clear that Charlie is not just an ordinary imaginary friend.

Another of my movie rules is that children in the movies often have imaginary friends, and they are never actually maginary.

The film is directed by John Polson, who isn't doing much to make up for Swimfan. The screenplay—what little that was not stolen from half a dozen other movies—was written by Ari Schollsberg, whose only other credit is a lost-behind-the-video-rack loser called Lucky 13. The list of donor scripts includes The Shining, Fear, Identity, and Secret Window, Secret Garden, as well as those mentioned previously. It's not inept. There some decent moments of genuine dread, but mostly it accomplishes its thrills with gratuitous shrieking cats, people who appear suddenly without warning or logic, corpses that aren't quite dead, and other schlocky "gotcha" moments.

I've lived with one or more cats for almost my entire life. None of them has ever once leaped out of a closet with a shriek. How do you film that kind of crap and expect to get paid?

Deniro is not stretching himself here, but he's solid. I found myself wishing he would take it up a notch. Dakota Fanning turns in a performance few actors of any age could; genuine and measured, but unfortunately too dark (blame that on the director tho; he must have started every seen with "Okay, Dakota, honey, you're very serious in this scene, very sad. Now... action!"). Famke Janssen and Elizabeth Shue are not given enough to do, and the other supporters are strictly chess pieces to be moved around to satisfy the machinery of the lumbering plot.

And lumber it does. Like all thrillers, things are not what they seem, but in this one we are supposed to be surprised to discover it. And, like any bad thriller, the end gratuitously leaves us wondering if the horror is really over. And for me it is, believe me. I'm not going to see Hide & Seek 2: Ollie Ollie Oxen Free.

Fun Fact: The call "ollie ollie oxen free" probably derives from "all ye, all ye outs in free," an invitation to those still hiding to return to base for another round.

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