Hide and Seek Review
by Johnny Betts (johnny_betts AT hotmail DOT com)February 1st, 2005
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Hide and Seek
http://www.themoviemark.com/moviereviews/hideandseek.asp
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! WHY? Why must movies do this to me? Man, this is so annoying.
Everything starts out great. Robert De Niro's wife kills herself. Ooooh, we're dealing with dark subject matter! Dakota Fanning displays her fine acting ability and starts to act a little creepy. All right, scary kids rule! De Niro decides they need to move to a house out in the middle of nowhere. Woo-hoo, a creepy location! OK, I must admit that I'm not so sure that moving to a spooky house located in a deserted place in the woods is really the best solution to help your daughter get over her mother's horrific suicide, but hey, it makes for an unsettling atmosphere so I'll roll with these dice.
What next, ah yes, the eerie next door neighbors who recently lost a child. We all know something strange is going on there! Then Dakota notices a spooky looking entrance to the woods, along with an even spookier looking cave. Shades of Pet Sematary anybody? This is gettin' good, folks. And they just get better when Dakota comes back from the woods with an imaginary friend, Charlie.
Cue the tense music, throw in some strange and threatening comments that Dakota claims Charlie told her, add De Niro's nightmares waking him up and leading him to several grisly scenes in the bathroom (no, Taco Bell was NOT involved), and I'm hooked, baby! I was eagerly waiting to see what would happen next. But then I started thinking...
Oh no. Please don't let my theory come to fruition.
Mr. Shade turned to me and said, "I hope [spoiler deleted] doesn't turn out to be [spoiler deleted]. That'd be awful." Sigh. I replied, "Yep. I hope that's not the case, but I was thinking the same thing." Then Stephanie turned to me and said, "I think I know." To which I replied, "I hope it's not [spoiler deleted]." Stephanie confirmed that's exactly what she was thinking. We watched in dread.
Then the revelation came. I'm sad to report that all three of us nailed it.
And unfortunately, it's all downhill after that. I sighed, sat back in my seat, and proceeded to not care anymore. And what's worse is that there was about 20 minutes left! It's like watching your favorite sports team play its guts out for most of the game, but then they start getting blown out. You know there's no chance of them making a comeback, but for some reason you continue to watch anyway.
I just don't get it. The first 2/3rds of the movie is very effective and very well-done. Dakota and De Niro are very good and very convincing in their roles. I've used "very" way more times than necessary in any one review. But then the big "twist" is revealed, and it's pretty much the same thing I've seen in at least three movies within the last year that have been as equally disappointing.
To make matters worse, we're treated to a series of inane and completely ineffective flashbacks that try to show us what was going on the entire time. They don't make any sense because none of the pieces fit in the puzzle that has been created. I don't mind being manipulated by a movie. The Sixth Sense did a great job of convincing us that one thing was happening, but then completely turning everything around and showing us what was really going on. The flashbacks actually worked within the context of everything we'd already seen. Sadly, that ain't the case with ol' Hide and Seek.
Nope. The writers just decided to make up stuff at the end of the movie that contradicts everything we've already seen just so they could try to explain their stupid plot twist. It's a cop-out, and my intelligence doesn't appreciate it.
I think I figured out why the movie is called Hide and Seek. It looks like the writers decided to hide about 2/3rds of the way through, and nobody bothered to seek out good writers to finish the script. They should've just called the movie Thriller by Numbers because after the big revelation, somebody just opened their copy of The Big Book of Thriller Clichés and started checking them off the list. It's just so frustrating.
Come on, if you show up at a house and notice an empty police car outside with its lights flashing, you might be alarmed, right? Well, what would you do if you then walked inside the house and saw a bloody shovel lying in front of an open door that leads down to a dark, dingy basement? You'd walk up to the door, peer into the darkness, and call out someone's name, right? OF COURSE NOT! So why are we expected to believe Famke Janssen's character would be so stupid? Sigh.
Note to Hollywood: If you're gonna give us an effective set-up, then please LEARN HOW TO EFFECTIVELY END THE MOVIE! For thrillers like this, the payoff is everything. I'm so sick of this disappointment. THE GIST
Hide and Seek is an effective thriller for about an hour. Unfortunately, when it comes time to give us the big revelation, the movie becomes entirely predictable and clichéd. I suppose if you haven't seen any Sixth Sense rip-offs within the past couple of years, then you might not see what's coming, but that's highly suspect. Wait for the rental. Maybe there will be deleted scenes or an alternate ending that will help the movie find some sort of redemption.
Rating: 3 (out of 5)
Johnny Betts
The Movie Mark
http://www.themoviemark.com
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