"Hide and Seek" Movie Review

"Hide and Seek" movie poster.

"After his wife commits suicide, David Callway (Robert DeNiro) and his daughter, Emily (Dakota Fanning), move upstate to find peace and 'restart' their lives. But when mysterious and dangerous things start happening, and Emily makes a new friend named Charlie, David and Emily's doctor, Katherine (Famke Janssen), begin to worry. Now, David and Emily must find a way out of this mess...if they are to survive." Written by jmfirecracker (Link below.)
Directed by John Polson (director of "Swimfan" and "Siam Sunset") and written by Ari Schlossberg (writer for "Harper's Island" and "Lucky 13"), "Hide and Seek" is a decent horror or psychological thriller geared towards adults. It reminded me of "Secret Window" (starring Johnny Depp and based on the short story by Stephen King). Also, "Psycho" with it's shower curtain references. If you have seen either of those movies, I just might have given the ending away. Even still, you should watch this film for its great pacing and interesting plot.

Dakota Fanning.

The only thing I found unsettling was DeNiro. Fanning was supposed to be creepy, and she was; a great actress even then. But DeNiro played an extremely calm father throughout everything in his life going to hell. He was a psychologist, but I think most everybody would've lost their cool after the cat died.

I think if I had not been watching this with my friend, who had already seen it, and didn't want me to figure out who it was too early, kept shouting off, "Did you SEE that?! That's telling! Remember that!" It got to the point where I couldn't completely pay attention to the movie. If I had been able to watch it by myself, I may have figured out what was going on a lot sooner than I did. Not that this is see-through, it just wasn't that big a surprise and makes the movie one that you can only watch once, unless you're a nerd and want to see what clues you missed the first go-around.

The dialogue transcript is available here: http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/h/hide-and-seek-script-transcript.html.

Robert DeNiro.

Favorite Lines:

Emily: Do you like her, Daddy?
David: Emily.
Emily: Charlie says you do.
David: Stop this.
Emily: Did Daddy tell you about my mommy?
David: I'm sure Elizabeth doesn't want to hear such things.
Emily: She killed herself. She slit her wrists and drowned in the bathtub. Let's hope you don't wind up like her.

Emily: I have a new friend.
David: A new friend?
Emily: He told me to call him Charlie.
David: When did you meet Charlie?
Emily: Today.
David: When we went to town?
Emily: Just before that.
David: Is he here right now?
Emily: I think he's sleeping.
David: Okay. Well, in that case, we better not wake him.

Katherine: It's not unusual for a child to create an imaginary friend.

Sources: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382077/plotsummary and http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382077/quotes.