Hide and Seek (2005, DVD)

Fifteen minutes into Hide and Seek, maybe even twenty, I loudly expressed my opinion to my girlfriend sitting next to me how the movie was going to end. I made the same assumption in White Noise, though I was only half right with it during that movie. With Hide and Seek though, I nailed it on the head. Scary movies are starting to trickle into theaters now, and while I can t comment on Boogeyman, Hide and Seek did exactly what it s intentions are - it made me jump. Boy did it make me jump good. Jumpiness aside, Hide and Seek didn t exactly stack up to what I thought it would be, and I was slightly disappointed with the ending.

When Alison Callaway (Amy Irving) commits suicide in her bathtub, her husband Dr. David Callaway (Robert Deniro) believes that it is time to leave their home and start a new life in another house. So where do they go? Away from the city and to a creepy town with a nosy town cop, neighbors who are a little too interested in his daughter Emily (Dakota Fanning), and a creepy cave in the woods behind their new house. The cave really has no significant symbolic value or reason for being there, except maybe to create a creepy edge. Too bad that the vehicle ran out of gas after a couple of miles. David gets more than he bargained for when he meant to start a new life. Soon Emily starts to lash out in a post-dramatic death type stage, which includes her new imaginary friend, Charlie.

Being a psychologist, David takes note of her actions and keeps a log of them in his notebook . At first he thinks that it s just a post-drama stage as she misses her mother, but soon things get weird, REAL weird. He keeps waking up in the middle of the night at 2:06 am hearing water drops coming from the bathroom (the exact time he woke up and found his wife dead), where he finds messages written in red lettering saying stuff like You let her die. He asks Emily why she d do such a thing, and she blamed it on Charlie. The same thing keeps happening again and again, and this is when the movie tries to build up to its big conclusion. Who is Charlie? He doesn t seem so imaginary anymore...

If there is anything I could say that could really describe the movie, it s been seen before. I called both of the movie s big twists in the first 15 minutes or so, and I had images from the two movies Identity and Secret Window in my head as I watched Hide and Seek. Scary monster movies seem to just not work very well nowadays in how bad they scare people, so these psychological thrillers take the place of them and they mess with your head and literally mess you up. I thought that Hide and Seek had some nice holy mother of sweet potato skinned onion soup! moments, but it just didn t have that same atmosphere throughout the entire movie. Most of the way the cameras were positioned gave a scary edge to the atmosphere, just not enough.

I enjoy Robert Deniro s performances, but I m not big on his acting in a horror movie. He didn t do bad, maybe not as bad as Ashton Kutcher in The Butterfly Effect, but he needs to stick to the funny roles. The facial expressions that he gives are much more suited for comedies and action movies. He cracked me up in Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers, though he was just so-so in Hide and Seek. Dakota Fanning on the other hand, she looks strikingly similar to the little Mara Wilson of Mrs. Doubtfire and Miracle on 34th Street fame. Dakota Fanning has the facial expressions that make a horror/thriller movie thrilling, and those big-bug eye looks that she gives are enough to give somebody nightmares. I didn t, but I thought I would have nightmares with her eyes just staring at me in my sleep that night, they were intimidating to say the least. She s going to be a little one to watch out for.

Overall, Hide and Seek had an interesting concept that is pretty much exactly like Secret Window with Johnny Depp, but it didn t have enough poise to coarse throughout the whole movie. The beginning was good, it had some jumpy scenes, and the ending was slightly interesting, but it certainly wasn t a movie I d recommend to somebody when they ask about a good horror movie to see. I am glad that I went with Hide and Seek instead of Boogeyman though as Boogeyman bombed at the box office. So if your options are limited between Hide and Seek and Boogeyman, go with Deniro.

happy viewing