Things go from bad to worse.... After establishing a promising premise, the filmmakers and the film go south.
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Here's the question: Is half a picture worth your time and money? Because that's what you get with Robert De Niro's 2005 thriller "Hide and Seek"--half a picture.
Put it this way: The first half is great; the second half is dreadful. Maybe you could find a rental store that only charges half price. Then it might be worth it.
Seriously, "Hide and Seek" had the potential to be a first-class horror mystery, but it missed the boat when director John Polson and screenwriter Ari Schlossberg took the easy route and copped out with the ending. And it's an ending that seems to go on for most of the second half of the picture. And on and on. Enough already. Unfortunately, it's nothing I can be too specific about without spoiling things any more than they already are. Let's just say that for me it's an ending that ranks right up there with Shyamalan's "The Village" for sheer "so-what?"-ness.
This is also one of those pictures where everyone acts so weird you can't trust anybody. It's undoubtedly supposed to keep us guessing about what's going on and who's up to what no good, but it's also something of a cop-out because no matter how the movie ends, the lack of surprise proves a disappointment.
The first forty-five minutes or so moves along gracefully, a sequence near the opening having a genuinely haunting, poetic quality about it, with a tinge of melancholic foreboding underlined by Robert Kraft and John Ottman's lyrical scoring. The foreboding is justified but for all the wrong reasons.
De Niro plays a New York City psychologist, Dr. David Callawy, whose wife (Amy Irving) has just committed suicide, slitting her wrists in the bathtub. Their young daughter, Emily (Dakota Fanning), witnesses the sight of her mother lying in a pool of blood, and it has a terribly traumatic effect on her. David decides Emily needs a new environment, so they move to the country in upper-state New York, to a small town, where David determines to be a full-time dad to his daughter.
The house David chooses is beautiful, big and old, and set near a lake and woods. It would appear to be both ideal and idyllic, but, naturally, it doesn't work out. Emily skulks around the house doing her best Wednesday Addams impression, and before long she claims to have a secret "friend" named Charlie.
Then bizarre things start to happen. David finds one of Emily's dolls mutilated and thrown in the trash. The words "You let her die" are written on a bathroom wall in Emily's handwriting and with Emily's crayons. Knives are misplaced. A window that is stuck shut is suddenly found open. A basement filled with an assortment of odds and ends is the source of strange noises. And Emily says Charlie is the cause of all the odd events and starts drawing pictures of him that are really scary.
Of course, there are the usual references to "Psycho": The staircase, the sheriff, the knives, the shower, the blood. No self-respecting horror movie these days can be without such references to the classic that started it all. In this case, the best that can be said for them is that they are not too distracting.
In addition, there are the bizarre characters who show up. Mr. Haskins (David Chandler), the Realtor who sells David the new house, is creepy. Sheriff Haskins (Dylan Baker), the local police officer, is creepy. Laura (Melissa Leo), a next-door neighbor, is creepy. Steven (Robert John Burke), Laura's husband, is even creepier than she is. It is only Elizabeth Young (Elisabeth Shue), a woman David meets in the community, who seems at all normal. Elizabeth has a niece, Amy, about Emily's age, and David thinks the child's company would be good for his daughter. Little does he know. "You shouldn't be here," Emily tells Amy. "You could get hurt."
Famke Janssen shows up from time to time as Katherine, one of David's colleagues and Emily's best friend. She tries to comfort David and Emily, but with little success.
Things go from bad to worse, for the Callaways and for the audience. After establishing a promising premise, the filmmakers and the film go south. Director John Polson, whose only previous movie of note was the even more deadly "Swimfan," pulls out all the usual horror-movie stops with loud noises, things going bump in the night, and bodies flying in all directions. At first, when the tone is hushed, the movie works. But as the story gets more frenetic, so does our ability to suspend disbelief. When we reach the final revelation, which comes much too soon, it's a total let down, followed by stunned disbelief that the filmmakers would resort to such an obvious gimmick. From then on it's a serious free-for-all downhill. And hanging on doesn't help.
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[release]15908[/release]