Robert De Niro is batting 0 for 2 with creepy thrillers. “Godsend” was god-awful and “Hide and Seek” should have stayed hidden away in a locked vault. That sounds harsh but I’m not apologizing. A confusing, contrived, mess of a movie, after sitting through it I would have demanded my money back if I hadn’t been at a free screening.
The plot is inconsequential so I’ll get right to the meat of this review. First off, there are a few items of casting that bothered me. De Niro seemed too old and disconnected from raising a child to have a young daughter. Then before you can get over the De Niro/Dakota Fanning age issue, they throw a Shue at you, Elisabeth Shue, as De Niro’s love interest. What the heck?
If a movie works, then the audience forgets the actors. But in order to get into the story, as a movie fan I want to believe the people up on the screen represent realistic relationships. These people didn’t. I know older men can have 10 year-old kids. I realize De Niro's got a young child in real life, but onscreen it wasn't happening. There wasn’t any father/daughter connection between De Niro and Fanning. It felt like Fanning came from a different world than De Niro. Chemistry, bonding, the intangible qualities that have to exist to make you believe in the movie’s fictional world were not there.
Dakota Fanning’s dark hair, heavy eye circles, and creepy mannequin-like behavior were effective but at the same time distracting. Nonetheless, Fanning’s acting was terrific. She just keeps getting better. The same can’t be said for De Niro. Hamming it up to the max, I believe the De Niro in “Godsend” and “Hide and Seek” must be the real De Niro’s evil twin. Otherwise, I’m at a loss to explain how this actor, the same man who gave performances in “Raging Bull,” “The Deer Hunter,” and “Taxi Driver” that are still being marveled over today, wound up in “Hide and Seek” playing a pale imitation of every other scary movie father in B-movie history.
“Hide and Seek” plays a game with its audience. At first, it’s this semi-interesting drama about a poor girl who’s lost her mom. Then it takes this unseemly twist to being a sort of romance for Robert De Niro and Elizabeth Shue. Stranger still, the movie does a take-off, quite unsuccessfully, on “The Shining” with De Niro taking on the role Nicholson played so well in that much better scarefest. All that’s missing in "Hide and Seek" is De Niro saying “Here’s Johnny…” Give me a break.
GRADE: D
"Hide and Seek" was directed by John Polson and is rated R for frightening sequences and violence.
