tek's rating: meh and a half

Hide and Seek (R)
20th Century Studios; Dread Central; IMDb; Rotten Tomatoes; TV Tropes; Wikipedia
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Well, I mainly wanted to see this because Dakota Fanning's in it. And she's the best part of the movie, of course. She plays a young girl named Emily Callaway, whose father David (Robert De Niro) is a psychologist. After Emily's mother kills herself, David moves with Emily from New York City to a new house about an hour away, in a small town, thinking new surroundings will help Emily recover from this traumatic event... though a friend/psychologist/former student of David's, a woman named Katherine (Famke Janssen), isn't sure the move is a good idea.

And it seems Katherine may have been right, because Emily starts talking about an imaginary friend named Charlie, who apparently says and does disturbing things... David, however, blames Emily for these things, and worries about her mental state. Emily says Charlie doesn't like David. She says Charlie says a lot of things about various people, like Emily's mother, and Katherine, and a woman David has recently started seeing named Elizabeth (Elisabeth Shue). As Charlie's "actions" become more disturbing, David finally begins to consider taking Emily back to New York.

And then things get worse. I don't want to say what happens, but I will say I had predicted the movie's twist very early on. Which isn't a bad thing. I mean, I probably would've been disappointed if the truth about Charlie had been anything else. So, the movie's okay, I guess. It wasn't that great, though. Not so much an entertaining or scary movie, but it was interesting to think about the situation... it was somewhat believable, and in real life it would've been terribly frightening, especially from Emily's point of view. Which of course gives Fanning a good chance to display her acting talents throughout the film. And that's pretty much all I can think to say... Oh yeah, maybe I should also mention that Emily liked to play hide and seek. Her mom used to play it with her, and her father played it, and Charlie played it with her, too.


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