Psycho's Movie Reviews #285: Hide and Seek (2005)

Hide and Seek is a 2005 American psychological horror film starring Robert De Niro and Dakota Fanning. It was directed by John Polson. The film opened in the United States on January 28, 2005, and grossed over $127 million worldwide. Rotten Tomatoes cited praise for De Niro and Fanning for their performances, though its consensus called the film "derivative, illogical and somewhat silly". Fanning received an MTV Movie Award for Best Frightened Performance in 2005.

Plot

Following his discovery of the body of his wife Alison (Amy Irving) in a bathtub after her apparent suicide, Dr. David Callaway (Robert De Niro), a psychologist, decides to move with his 9-year-old daughter Emily (Dakota Fanning) to upstate New York. There, Emily makes an imaginary friend she calls "Charlie". Her friendship with Charlie begins to disturb David when he discovers their cat dead in the bathtub, who Emily claims was a victim of "Charlie". David has nightmares of the New Year's Eve party that occurred the night before Alison's death.

When a family friend, Dr. Katherine Carson (Famke Janssen), comes to visit David, Emily reveals that she and Charlie have a mutual desire to upset her father. David meets Elizabeth Young (Elisabeth Shue), a local woman, and her niece, Amy, who is the same age as Emily. Hoping to cultivate a healthy friendship for Emily, David sets up a play date. Amy is eager to become friends and gives one of her dolls to Emily but the play date is spoiled when Emily cuts up Amy's doll's face. Emily tells David she doesn't need any friends.

David invites Elizabeth over to dinner one night, where Emily acts hostile toward her. Elizabeth later tries to make peace with Emily. When Emily tells her that she is playing hide-and-seek with Charlie, Elizabeth indulges her by pretending to look for Charlie. When she opens the closet, someone bursts out and pushes her out the window to her death.

David asks Emily what happened. Emily claims Charlie killed Elizabeth and forced Emily to help him move the body. She tells David the location of the body. David discovers Elizabeth in the bathtub full of blood (similar to how Alison died). Armed with a knife, he goes outside, where he meets their neighbour and assumes that his neighbour is Charlie. He cuts the neighbour and the neighbour calls the police.

Back in the house, David finds that, although he has been in his study many times, the boxes were actually never unpacked after the move. He realizes that he has dissociative identity disorder and Charlie is not imaginary at all: "Charlie" is David himself. Whenever "Charlie" would emerge, David would be in his study. He also finally recalls the New Year's Eve party the night before his wife's death. He had caught Alison making out with another guest. "Charlie" was created as a way to express David's rage so that he could murder his wife, something the docile David was too decent to do. Emily knew the entire time about her father's split personality but did not tell him because she was unsure which personality murdered her mother until "Charlie" killed Elizabeth.

Once David realizes the truth, he becomes completely consumed by Charlie, leading him to murder the local sheriff, who arrives to investigate the neighbour. Emily calls Katherine for help, tricks Charlie, and escapes into the cave where she originally met Charlie. Katherine takes the gun from the dead sheriff and finds Charlie in the cave. He pretends to be David and attacks Katherine. Katherine begs for David to fight his murderous other personality. Charlie says David no longer exists. Emily emerges, begging Charlie to let Katherine go. Her distraction allows Katherine to shoot Charlie, killing him at last.

Later, Emily is preparing for school in her new life with Katherine. But Emily's drawing of herself with two heads suggests that she might also have dissociative identity disorder.

Endings

This film has a total of five different endings, The US theatrical version had the following ending:

Bad Drawing: Preparing for school while living a new life with Katherine, Emily draws a picture of herself and Katherine, suggesting that Emily does not have dissociative identity disorder. But when the camera cuts back to Emily's drawing, Emily has two heads suggesting she now has dissociative identity disorder. This ending is included as an alternate ending on DVDs featuring the International theatrical ending.

Another four were included on the DVD:

Happy Drawing: The same as the ending in the US theatrical version, except that the drawing Emily makes of herself has only one head, suggesting that she does not have dissociative identity disorder.

One Final Game: Emily is shown seemingly in a new apartment bedroom, and Katherine's actions mirror that of her mother's at the beginning of the film. She reassures her love to Emily and begins to leave the room. Emily asks Katherine to leave the door open, but Katherine insists she cannot. As the door shuts, a protected window is visible on the door. The next cut is of Katherine locking the door from the outside, revealing this assumed apartment bedroom is actually a hospital room in a children's psychiatric ward. Emily gets out of bed and does a Hide and Seek countdown. She nears the closet, opens, and smiles at her own reflection in the mirror.

Emily's Fate (International theatrical ending): Same as above in the psychiatric ward, but without the Hide and Seek countdown. This ending was featured in the international theatrical version.

Life with Katherine: An ending similar to that in the psychiatric ward, but in this ending Emily is not in a ward but her new home. After Katherine shuts the door, Emily gets out of bed to play Hide and Seek with her own reflection.

On the DVD, the main menu enables you to watch the film with any one of the five endings.

Release/Reception/Box Office

20th Century Fox released two versions of the film: the international version and the domestic version. Both versions received different endings. The domestic version was released in the US, while the international version was released to other countries. Both the international and domestic versions submitted to the BBFC were actually released to UK cinemas. Both versions passed for a 15 certificate for "moderate horror and violence". The film was released on DVD on July 5, 2005, in the US and on July 25, 2005, in the UK.

On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an approval rating of 13% based on 158 reviews, with an average rating of 3.85/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "Robert De Niro and especially Dakota Fanning have earned some praise for their work in Hide and Seek, but critics have called the rest of the film derivative, illogical and somewhat silly."[4] On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 35 out of 100, based on 34 critics, indicating "generally unfavourable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B–" on an A+ to F scale.

BBC Movies gave the film two stars out of five, commenting that "Robert De Niro continues his long slide into mediocrity with yet another charmless psycho-thriller." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film two stars out of four: "There was a point in the movie when suddenly everything clicked, and the Law of Economy of Characters began to apply. That is the law that says no actor is in a movie unless his character is necessary." According to the New York Times the film was hampered by budgetary restrictions and the Toronto Sun said it was one of De Niro's worst.

In its opening weekend in US theatres, the film grossed $21,959,233. In the US, the film grossed $51,100,486. The film brought in $71,544,334 internationally. Overall, the film grossed $122,650,962 worldwide.

Budget $25 million

Box office $127.4 million

My Review

Add this one to the collection...A Perfect Murder, What Lies Beneath, Don't Say A Word, Secret Window...and so on and so on and so on. No it's not a bad thing at all. All those movies were great, amazing, fun thrillers...except maybe Secret Window. All these thrillers have the same make-up, the same recipe. But if you enjoy thrillers of this style then you've got nothing to worry about.

Hide and Seek is the story of a family, the Callaways who seem to have the perfect life. Unfortunately, Alison, the mother, is very unhappy. Both the father and the daughter awaken one night to find the mother dead in the bathtub with her wrists cut. David moves his daughter to the country to try and escape the memories of her mother's death. Unfortunately the little girl seems to be getting worse emotionally and she begins to talk of her friend Charlie who seems harmless at first but slowly begins to make things very bad for them. The rest is a bit of a twist.

Dakota Fanning was only 11, but she has already 16 movies on her record, and another three in production. She was directed by Spielberg, she worked with Tom Hanks and now with Robert Deniro. She is competing with Nicole Kidman for the super-active star of the year title. Yes, she is an amazing actor, although having her act in such dark films that she would not be legally allowed to watch for the next six or seven years raises some interesting moral questions for her parents or legal tutors to answer.

But well, we are seeing a piece of entertainment, so let us judge it by its own value. I read some other comments and do not really understand why 'Hide and Seek' got that badly beaten by other viewer. It starts as a psychological story, of a child traumatized by the suicide death of her mother. Her father moves in the country to help her, but as you can imagine the change in scene will not help and will not leave to a quiet development. The girl seems to start living in a half imaginative world, strange and stranger things seem to happen, and the relationship between the father and daughter turns ugly. It is quite easy to smell the double personality trick, but when it comes it comes in logic. The comparison with 'Secret Window' is immediate, and although De Niro does not get to the level of deepness that Johny Depp reached there, he is quite good in his portrayal of the bereaved father, different from his usual formula.

Without being very original, Hide and Seek is credible, well acted, and did not seem to fall into ridicule at any moment.

There has to be the obligatory twist. It's not beyond figuring out but again that makes us feel smart and part of the mystery to figure out some of the clues ourselves. The story is a little slow moving at first as director John Polson allows everything to be clearly explained without worrying about cutting the film down to an annoyingly short hour and a half. The film stands firm at two hours and doesn't bore by any means. Part of that reason is the two main members of the cast. The always amazing, truly worthy of star status, Robert Deniro in a very familiar type role for him but still great. And the equally amazing, she holds her own against the veteran Deniro, Dakota Fanning. She is creepy, and perfect for her role demonstrating something different from her usual roles and she pulls it off. This little girl is an amazing actress. The two of them are enough to watch for an entire two hours. Nonetheless the final hour of the film is riveting and nail biting as all thrillers must be to be watchable. Anyone who loves a good mainstream thriller will love this movie. If you're looking for something unique and artsy....well this isn't it...this is just for a good time, and that you will have. 8/10