Hide and Seek: Critic Reviews

It was really only a matter of time before 10-year-old Dakota Fanning brought her unsettling precocity to the horror genre. And it's a bit of a waste.

Robert De Niro rises to a formidable challenge in this sufficiently unsettling thriller: he holds his own against the scene-swiping 10-year-old actress Dakota Fanning.

The movie's only rewards are a few unintentional laughs, as when the sheriff (Dylan Baker) calls Emily a 'cute kid' after a long stretch in which she's been acting and looking battier than Sunset Boulevard's Norma Desmond.

It doesn't get stupid for a long time! That's the finest compliment these kind of movies can aspire to. This means you'll have a decent time.

High class briefly gives way to high camp, which then itself dissipates to an anticlimactic thud.

You won't find anything startling or memorable.

Follows no semblance of internal logic.

Another of those real-estate horror movies that sticks it to urbanites who overspend on picturesque Victorian houses in towns where the locals resent them. For city folk in rambling country homes, something wicked this way comes.

For the first hour or so it builds inexorably to an excruciating level of dread. It does this so well, we're willing to forgive the small lapses of logic it takes to get us there.

Add this movie to Robert De Niro's climb up Mount Hackdom.

As a fright movie, Hide and Seek is only a middling thriller. But as a tip sheet for real estate shoppers in wooded rural areas, it's top-notch.

There was a point in the movie when suddenly everything clicked, and the Law of Economy of Characters began to apply. That is the law that says no actor is in a movie unless his character is necessary.

The actor who gave us Johnny Boy, Travis Bickle, Jake La Motta and the young Vito Corleone still has his chops.

The movie goes down the tubes in the last third.

The movie's main purpose seems to be to make audiences squirm uncomfortably. Yelp and shriek in armchair-clawing glee? Not likely.

First-time screenwriter Ari Schlossberg builds an atmosphere of free-floating apprehension through most of its length before pulling an 11th-hour switcheroo that undermines the stars' commendable efforts.

The movie is not without merit. Ten-year-old Fanning ably handles her part, which alternately requires her to adopt a thousand-yard stare and look like a scared little girl.

[An] idiotic, yawn-a-minute thriller.

It's become almost trite to criticize him for his recent string of dubious movies, but we'll do it anyway, because he's capable of so much better.

Give us a reason to care.

The movie is bad in the sense of being morally reprehensible.

There are few scares and even less logic.

Through its first two-thirds, at least, Hide and Seek does a good enough job of piquing our curiosity that the movie's ultimate dumbness is more than a minor insult.

The plodding director, John Polson, reliably telegraphs the big boos, and the next time I see an actor gingerly open a cupboard and get knocked back by an overamplified screeching cat, I'm walking.