Hide and Seek a Game Not Worth Playing

New York psychologist David Callaway (Robert DeNiro, returning to suspense/horror for the fist time since Cape Fear) awakes during the dead of night to the mysterious sounds of trickling water. Making his way to the bathroom, he’s horrified to discover his beautiful wife Alison (Amy Irving, Traffic) dead with the outward cause of death being the gaping, apparently self-inflicted wounds on her wrists. Shattered, this moment of sorrow couldn’t get any worse.

Then his young daughter Emily (Dakota Fanning, Man on Fire) walks in.

In a single moment, life changes for both father and daughter, and against the advice of child psychologist – and former student – Katherine (Famke Janssen, X2), David decides to move upstate in hopes the relative seclusion of country life will help Emily get over her mother’s death. Said help comes in the shape of an imaginary friend named Charlie, a person the little girl sees as friend, confidant and protector. But when strange things start happening around the house; words scribbled in crayon, dolls without their heads, cats drowned in a murky bathtub; David starts to think Charlie might not be the good omen he first thought.

The new Twentieth Century Fox thriller Hide & Seek is a surprisingly sleek and suspenseful tale of melancholy, paranoia and murder that unfortunately goes so far off the rails during its final third I almost had to laugh. The final stretch is so obscenely absurd, so clearly obvious any good will a person generates throughout the first ninety minutes is quickly laid waste by the exuberantly awfulness of the final act. It is a waste of both time and talent, a glut of performers whom all deserve better suffering through the ignominy of a wretchedly botched missed opportunity.

Shame, because for a while there director John Polson (Swimfan) and writer Ari Schlossberg (Lucky 13) seem to be hitting all the right notes in sublimely creepy ways. The setup is actually quite wonderful. Neither Polson nor Schlossberg push the building tensions, allowing them to seep into the film gradually. Sure they throw too many obvious red herrings our way; not only is there a sinister sheriff (Dylan Baker, Kinsey) and a cagey realtor (David Chandler, The Grey Zone), but also a fidgety grieving married couple (Robert John Burke, Connie and Carla, and Melissa Leo, 21 Grams) that just exude malice and menace; but in a movie like this that’s almost to be expected.

What director and writer do get right are two powerfully controlled performances by both DeNiro and Fanning. After spending much of his time of late in comedy powering films like Meet the Fockers into box office smashes, it is nice seeing DeNiro back in more adult fair. For much of Hide and Seek, he underplays David perfectly, letting the audience absorb the growing tension through his ever more restless eyes. He’s matched by the bizarrely talented Fanning. At just ten-years-old, this young girl just keeps getting better and better and is starting to make a career of upstaging her far more famous costars like Denzel Washington, Sean Penn and now Robert DeNiro. It’s eerie, and I’m almost starting to think this little dynamo isn’t human.

But it doesn’t last. It starts with characters doing things that are just plain stupid, like say walking into someone else’s home and wandering around aimlessly even though all signs point to it being a very bad idea, and ends with a main character morphing into a not-very-scary combination of Freddy Krueger and Milton Waddams, the sadsack loser of Mike Judge’s Office Space. In shooting for a Sixth Sense-like finish, Polson and Schlossberg just don’t know when to quit, amping things up to ludicrously ever-increasing heights that sent most of the audience into fits of uncontrollable laughter. The publicists beg mercilessly that we critics don’t give away the movie’s supposedly ingenious “twist,” and while I’m more the willing to acquiesce I can’t help but feel audiences are going to come away with that same look of disgust they carried walking out of last summer’s The Village.

Pity, because for quite a while there I thought I was in for a good A-level scary-story treat the likes of which we haven’t seen in quite some time. John Ottman’s (Cellular) score is chilling and effective, while cinematographer Dariusz Wolski (The Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl) glides his camera with a balefully malevolent grace. Most of the supporting players get in a good lick or two, especially Janssen whose wonderful, although I was very disappointed at the short shrift given to both Irving and Elisabeth Shue (Leaving Las Vegas), talented actresses whom both deserve far better than what they’re given to do here.

Not that any of it matters by the end. Things become so implausibly asinine I felt like Simon Cowell sitting through the umpteenth rendition of “I Will Always Love You,” wanting desperately to through my arms up in the air and walk away. In fact, the best advice I can muster for moviegoers is to hide from this mess and seek out better entertainment elsewhere.

Film Rating: êê  (out of 4)