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Hide and Seek
Release Date: January 28,
2005
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Director: John Polson
Screenwriter: Ari Schlossberg
Starring: Robert De Niro, Dakota Fanning, Famke Janssen, Elisabeth
Shue, Dylan Baker, Robert John Burke, Alicia Harding, Amy Irving, Melissa Leo,
James McCaffrey
Genre: Drama, Horror, Thriller
MPAA Rating: R (for frightening sequences and violence)
Official Website:
HideandSeekthemovie.com
Review:
4/10 rating
DVD Review: Not Available
DVD/VHS: Not Available
Movie Poster:
View here
Production Stills:
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Plot Summary: "Come out, come out, wherever
you are!"
That command is familiar to everyone who has played the children's game, Hide
and Seek. The words and game take us back to an innocent, carefree time in our
lives, where the simple goal was to find hiding playmates. Many children could
even enjoy a spirited game with imaginary friends.
But then, imaginary friends can sometimes seem so real...
Reviewed by Peter
Veugelaers © 2005
- Almost phony baloney
Anything with Robert De Niro is usually worth a look
even if the movie turns out to be mediocre. In Hide and Seek De Niro is
doing a great job even though the movie is less satisfying.
De Niro plays a psychologist whose daughter (Dakota Fanning)
witnesses the death of her mother (Amy Irving). He believes a change of
environment will help her so they move to the country. You could be forgiven for
wanting a film about how nature enlivens the troubled soul. Wrong movie.
But this is about how environment shapes children and
appears to be deeply felt about traumatic shameful incidents and their
consequences. An efficient beginning sets effectively a scene of domestic drama:
the psychologist appears to be preoccupied compassionately by her daughter’s
predicament. Within the first twenty minutes these characters are presented
intelligently. Their neighbours, at first normal people, progressively become
more mysterious, characters who are ultimately inconsequential. All is not what
it seems though; when the girl escapes into having an imaginary friend called
Charlie this is only the beginning.
The main characters’ psychological problems are embedded as
the supernatural horror generic sensibilities, which are downplayed somewhat
here, metaphorically speak of their torment. How effectively it does this is
shaped by a superficial viewing which will frighten only the easily moved, or
someone willing to look at the finer details. In both cases the movie’s
potential is under utilised; the horror is in need of an exorcist and the
underlining issues are taken over by inserting blatant and ineffective scares.
For a mediocre movie its ideology could give ammunition for family groups,
evidence for sociologists, and perhaps a few comments from feminist theorists,
if it is worth the effort.
In the film’s middle the horror elements take over unsubtly and the tone is
nastier. The last fifteen minutes quickens momentum in a sadistic plot twist.
This “revealing” simplistic twist is a cheap trick. The plot contains loose ends
and incoherence, the story does not make sense in places if you stop to think it
through (who’s Charlie?). There is material for four films here: a horror, a
thriller, a drama, and a sympathetic art house look at disturbed children
convalescing in the country.
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