Hide and Seek

Directed by John Polson, Hide and Seek follows Robert De Niro’s David Callaway as he and his young daughter (Dakota Fanning’s Emily) move out of the city in the wake of his wife’s (Amy Irving’s Alison) suicide – with complications arising after Emily seeks solace and comfort with a dangerous imaginary friend named Charlie. It’s a promising setup that’s employed to mostly underwhelming and uninvolving effect by Polson, as the filmmaker, working from Ari Schlossberg’s screenplay, offers up a styleless, excessively deliberate endeavor that’s exacerbated by the less-than-captivating efforts of its lead performances – with De Niro and Fanning turning work that is, respectively, egregiously stiff and aggravatingly broad. (The talented supporting cast, which includes Elisabeth Shue and Dylan Baker, remains hopelessly unable to add any color to the proceedings, as well.) There’s little doubt, at least, that Hide and Seek does finally improve slightly in the wake of an admittedly intriguing twist in its third act, although the impact of this comparatively enthralling stretch is diminished considerably by Polson’s relentlessly (and aggressively) generic and bland approach to the material (ie imagine what a filmmaker like Brian De Palma could’ve done with this script) – which does, in the end, cement the picture’s place as a completely forgettable misfire that well and truly squanders its above-average cast and premise.

** out of ****