Directed by John Polson
Written by Ari Schlossberg
Produced by Barry Josephson
Music by John Ottman
Cinematography by Dariusz Wolski
Edited by Jeffrey Ford
Production Design by Steven J. Jordan

Cast
Robert DeNiro (David Callaway)
Dakota Fanning (Emily Callaway)
Famke Janssen (Katherine)
Elisabeth Shue (Elisabeth)
Amy Irving (Alison Callaway)
Dylan Baker (Sheriff Hathaway)

Robert DeNiro may have top billing on the poster and in the credits, he may have a reputation as one of the finest dramatic film actors ever to grace the silver screen, but the reason this thriller got made is his co-star Dakota Fanning. I find it hard to imagine that any Hollywood executive would give the greenlight to this script if they didn’t have a child actress as intense and eerie as Dakota Fanning in mind to play the part of the disturbed and disturbing young Emily Callaway. Whatever they paid Fanning to appear in this movie, it wasn’t enough: she’s the film’s only strength. So far this year she has upstaged both Robert DeNiro and Tom Cruise (in War of the Worlds). Al Pacino and Russell Crowe better watch out.

Hide and Seek stands in the long line of films imitating M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense with its low-key atmosphere and plot-upsetting twist finale. The only film since The Sixth Sense to successfully pull off the same feat is The Others (and I personally think more highly of The Others than Shyamalan’s film). Hide and Seek also uses an unhinged and depressed child as its focal point. Fanning plays the pale-skinned and wide-eyed little Emily Callaway, whose loving mother (Amy Irving) commits suicide in the bathtub. David Callaway, Emily’s psychologist father (DeNiro) decides that completely uprooting his daughter from all human contact and moving to the sticks of upstate New York will cure Emily’s habit of staring at the walls and looking spooky. Famke Janssen, who plays another psychologist whose close relationship to the Callaways and Emily in particular never receives any explanation, warns David against this. The audience, of course, also thinks this is a dumb idea, but the plot has to get moving somehow.

David, apparently free from having to actually do any work as a psychologist to support himself and his daughter, buys a beautiful upstate house in a sleepy community. Before too long little Emily has an imaginary friend named ‘Charlie’ who seems not to approve of Daddy or the beautiful single woman he has started to see (Elisabeth Shue). Since David keeps having montages about staircases and parties and kissing his wife, it seems that Something-Is-Up beyond his daughter having a hard time coping with her mother’s suicide. The film takes its time building the suspense as ‘Charlie’ makes his displeasure increasingly known through an escalation of brutal acts and scribbled notes.

For the film to work at all, the sense of tightening doom and mystery (Is Charlie a ghost? Is Emily behind all of it? Do the weird next-door neighbors have any connection to these events? If this is fall, why isn’t Emily in school?) has to grow unbearable during this mounting buildup, but director Polson doesn’t provide much in the way of atmosphere or suspense. Even the photography, normally a given for this genre, doesn’t create enough clammy and moody darkness. John Ottman’s music sounds mostly non-descript, except for the copycat Rosemary’s Baby lullabye over the opening credits; he even adds silly lyrics to it for the end credits scrawl. Dakota Fanning, bless her twisted little heart, gives it her all in the deranged department, but everything around her remains at one level, creeping slowly ahead until the last half hour when the twist finally hits. Then film kicks into…uhm…medium.

I won’t spoil the trick at the three-quarter mark, but most viewers will have nailed it down for themselves long before that. Even though the plot foreshadows it in many places, the twist makes little logical sense once it leaps out into the open; the filmmakers probably hoped that no one would watch the movie a second time (a realistic hope) and see the swiss-cheese logic of it all. Even one time through the movie will leave most viewers scratching their heads while the tepid chase finale unspools on screen. As horror movie endings go, it rates par for the course: victim hides, killer seeks. Hey, maybe we could adapt that for the title!

The DVD has four alternate endings, really nothing more four different brief codas. Three of them add a slightly darker coloration to the film, but none change the body of the film in any significant way. Hide and Seek remains a bland thriller with one really spooky little girl driving it along. If 20th Century Fox ever gets the daft idea to remake The Omen [2006 update: they did], perhaps they should change Damien to ‘Damienella’ so Dakota Fanning can play the Antichrist. [They didn’t.] That would at least make yet another horror remake slightly bearable. [It wasn’t.]

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